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http://www.archive.org/details/centennialofrevoOOhurdrich 


THE    CENTENNIAL 


OF  A 


REVOLUTION: 


AN   ADDRESS 


BY 


A    REVOLUTIONIST 

n 


NEW   YORK  &  LONDON 
G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 

Cfce  3&m'cfcevbocfccr  %&zss 

iSSS 


tfs^ 


3 


COPYRIGHT   BV 

WM.    H.    FARRINGTON 


&/*/? 


Press  of 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York 


THE  CENTENNIAL 

or  a 

REVOLUTION 

AN    ADDRESS    BY  A    REVOLUTIONIST. 


Fellow  Subjects:— 

We  celebrated  the  17th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1887,  as  the  centennial  anniversary  of 
an  event  which  we  chose  to  call  the  Adoption 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

The  annual  return,  in  the  calendar  of  months, 
of  a  day  remarked  only  as  coincident  with  the 
date  of  a  past  event,  however  great  its  impor- 
tance, should  not  be  enough  to  give  it  the  ob- 
servance of  an  anniversary.  All  true  anniver- 
saries look  backward  upon  something  which, 
having  once  been,  has  ever  since  continued  to 
be  :  not  on  anything  which  once  was,  but  is 
now  no  longer.  For  the  record  of  deeds  done 
and  things  which  have  been,  the  inscription  of 
their  days  and  years  in  the  stony  mausoleums 
of  history  is  sufficient.  The  anniversary,  to  be 
one — to  be  a  "return  of  the  day" — should  mark 
another  year  of  duration.  The  22d  of  Febru- 
I 


1  The  Centennial 

ary,  recurring,  may  mark  for  us  another  year 
of  continuation  for  that  political  achievement 
for  which  Washington  stands  as  representative 
of  his  generation's  claim  on  memory.  If  that 
achievement  has  become  a  dead  thing,  the  rec- 
ollection of  his  birthday  is  only  a  ghost  haunt- 
ing a  sepulchre,  and  we  must  choose  the  natal 
day  of  some  hero  of  our  more  modern  history 
for  stimulating  the  patriotic  instincts.  Anni- 
versary— annual,  or  centennial — asserts  contin- 
uance. No  index  by  the  finger  of  time  which 
reminds  of  what  only  was  and  has  ceased  to  be 
deserves  the  name.  The  Christian  era  and  the 
days  commemorated  year  after  year  in  its  rites 
and  churches  are  what  they  are  only  as  the  life 
of  the  Founder  and  the  passages  of  His  earthly 
existence,  are  reflected  in  the  lives  and  disci- 
pline of  a  continuing  body  of  believers. 

Had  we  thought  to  observe  the  year  1887  as 
the  centenary  of  a  continuing  existence — a  con- 
tinuing event,  a  continuing  action,  a  continuing 
something?  What  and  where  then  is  that 
which  as  the  thing  or  action,  called  the  Adop- 
tion of  the  Constitution,  was  once  and  has 
since  continued  to  be  ?  Is  it  the  adoption  it- 
self?    Is  that  the  continuing  event?     Or  was 


of  a  Revolution.  3 

that  one  of  those  deeds  which,  when  done,  are 
done  once,  have  their  effect  and  cease  being 
done  ;  having  no  years  of  duration  to  be  num- 
bered ?  You  may  say — Well,  what  if  that 
adoption  was  the  bare  deed  of  a  day,  a  month, 
or  a  year,  which  being  once  done  had  no  con- 
tinuance, was  not  the  result  the  real  event  in 
the  adoption,  and  was  not  this  result  an  exist- 
ence which  then  began  and  which  could  con- 
tinue— the  continuing  Government  of  the 
United  States,  then  ordained  and  established 
by  the  constitution  then  adopted  ;  a  govern- 
ment framed  according  to  that  adoption  ?  Do 
we  not  see  it  to-day,  with  our  eyes,  as  our 
grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers  saw  it 
then  ?  What  better  continuing  thing  can 
there  be  :    adoption  or  no  adoption  ? 

So  then,  we  see  now,  do  we,  what  our  pre- 
decessors saw  beginning  one  hundred  years 
ago,  when  the  constitution  was  adopted  in  a 
convention  at  Philadelphia?  Very  well.  Sup- 
pose we  should  talk  together  a  little,  more  or 
less,  about  this  hundred-year-old  existence. 

By  celebrating  anniversaries,  each  successive 
generation  thinks  to  identify  itself  with  those 
\vho    in  other  days   and   as   its   predecessors, 


4  The  Centennial 

established  the  actual  conditions  of  its  own 
physical,  social,  and  political  existence.  Yet 
to  each  mature  individual  of  the  human  race 
his  conception  of  a  century  of  years  brings 
with  it  the  consciousness  of  the  limited  span 
of  his  own  share  in  that  existence.  A  genera- 
tion's continuance  is  brief  under  the  guaging 
of  a  century.  We  accept  it  as  inevitable  that 
none  who  to-day  act  and  think  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  social  relations  will  be  so  acting 
and  thinking  at  the  close  of  the  century  lying 
before  us.  Four  generations  may  be  computed 
to  have  shared  the  duration  of  the  century  just 
passed,  and  we  recognize  that  none  of  us  who 
have  trod  the  stage  of  life  among  the  last,  could 
also  have  participated  in  the  activity  of  the 
first  of  these  generations.  And  yet  you  of 
this  generation,  celebrating  this  centennial  year, 
believe  that  you  see  the  same  Government  of 
the  United  States  which  the  third,  the  second, 
and  the  first  of  those  preceding  generations 
saw. 

We  assume  that  we  are  living  in  the  one 
hundredth  year  since  a  government  for  a  coun- 
try called  "  The  United  States "  came  into 
existence  ;  a  government  acting  by  executing, 


of  a  Revolution.  5 

by  legislating,  by  judging,  by  president,  by 
congress,  by  judiciary.  But  what  has  been 
or  whatever  could  be  this  government,  that 
our  fathers  in  their  generations  or  we  in  ours 
should  cherish  its  anniversaries  ?  What  is  any 
government  ?  Not  what  is  government  in 
general,  or  governing  in  the  abstract,  as  a 
variety  of  human  action  ;  but  what  is  a  govern- 
ment, that  it  can  be  said  to  have  begun,  to  con- 
tinue, to  exist ;  to  be  called  the,  or  this  or  that 
government;  your,  our,  anybody's  govern- 
ment ;  to  be  seen  or  felt,  talk  and  be  talked 
to,  as  being  here  or  there,  in  this  or  any  other 
part  of  the  earth?  Is  a  government,  to  your 
minds,  some  group  of  individuals,  titled  and 
salaried,  as  executive,  legislative,  judicial  func- 
tionaries, fulfilling,  officially,  duties  prescribed, 
while  using  powers  delegated  to  them  as  agents, 
under  some  law  resting  on  the  continuing  ex- 
istence, power  and  will  of  some  one  else,  some 
person  or  persons  to  whom  such  officials  are 
individually  and  collectively  subordinate,  or  as 
an  administration  ;  while  these  other  person  or 
persons  hold  all  powers  of  political  jurisdiction 
in  absolute  independence  or  sovereignty,  with 
capacity  to  give  or  withhold,  delegate  or  recall 


6  The  Centennial 

all  or  any  such  powers  by  their  free  command, 
written  or  unwritten  ? 

If  the  Government  of  the  United  States  has, 
all  along,  been  such  a  government  only — an 
administration  to  whom  the  written  constitu- 
tion has  been  an  authorizing  act  or  power  of 
attorney,  or  a  statutory  enactment  resting  on 
some  continuing  possession  of  sovereignty — 
then  the  adoption  of  that  constitution  should 
have  been  a  continuing  act  of  will  on  the  part 
of  the  possessor  of  that  sovereignty ;  an  act 
which,  as  adoption,  could  continue,  and  which, 
by  enduring  all  these  one  hundred  years  has 
continuously  sustained  that  government  since 
the  day  it  was  first  instituted  and  ordained. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  this  government  by 
successive  presidents,  congresses  and  judiciaries 
did  one  hundred  years  ago,  through  the  adop- 
tion of  the  constitution,  acquire  any  power  or 
powers,  as  power  abdicated  by  some  then  exist- 
ing possessor,  or  as  surrendered  by  such,  or  as 
transferred  once  for  all,  so  far  as  such  possessor 
was  concerned,  and  passed  over,  so  far  as  sover- 
eign power  can  pass  by  any  act  of  its  possessors, 
to  some  other  person — then,  the  adoption  is  a 
dead  past  event,  and  the  continuing  thing  for 


of  a  Revolution.  7 

our  centennial  anniversary  is  our  Government, 
found  in  the  persons  of  our  President,  our  Con- 
gress, our  Judiciary  of  the  United  States  ;  the 
only  thing  or  personality  that  can  have  con- 
tinued, so  far  as  anything  resulting  from  such 
adoption  of  the  constitution  has  continued  at 
all. 

If  we,  in  our  generation,  are  agreed  as  to 
which  of  these  two  views  of  the  action  called 
"  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States"  is  the  true  one, -we  shall  show 
ourselves  either  better  or  worse  historical  critics 
than  our  fathers  in  the  generations  which  have 
preceded  us  in  the  century  now  ending.  From 
the  first  hour  of  that  so-called  "  adoption  "  the 
dispute  has  waged,  mild  or  bitter,  with  words 
or  with  swords — whether  it  was  legislative 
action  or  political  transfer ;  power  of  attorney 
or  abdication.  But  settled  or  unsettled,  we 
might  have  our  anniversaries  as  well  as  our 
ancestors  :  celebrate  the  centennial  in  spite  of 
that  controversy,  as  we  individually  should  like 
it  best,  either  as  antiquarians-  or  as  politicians. 
We  are  all  agreed  that  a  hundred  years  are 
a  century,  that  it  is  now  a  hundred  years  since 
1787,  and  so  have  our  processions,  jollifications, 


8  The  Centennial 

and  speechifications,  with  as  much  or  as  little 
harmony  as  our  predecessors. 

But  whatever  it  may  have  been  that  began 
by  that  adoption  in  1787,  have  we  any  assur- 
ance that  it  has  continued  to  the  present  day  : 
any  assurance  that  the  government  of  the 
United  States,  then  first  seen,  has  continued, 
either  as  government  under  law,  resting  on  con- 
tinuing adoption,  or  as  government  holding 
enumerated  powers  through  grant,  cession  or 
abdication  by  an  earlier  possessor  of  those 
powers?  Does  the  continued  succession  of  pres- 
idents, senators,  congressmen,  justices  ;  elected, 
titled,  salaried,  like  their  earliest  predecessors, 
show,  for  certain,  an  identity  and  continuity  of 
that  government  which  began  in  1787-9?  May 
there  not  have  been  a  conquest?  The  con- 
queror allowing  all  forms  of  administration, 
according  to  the  written  constitution  and  local 
laws,  to  remain  though  deriving,  thereafter, 
their  force  from  that  conqueror,  the  adminis- 
trative officials  being  sworn  to  obey  the  terms 
of  the  written  constitution  as  being  the  order 
of  the  conqueror.  Such  changes  have  often 
occurred  in  other  countries. 

A  conquest  by  a  foreign  power  should,   you 


of  a  Revolution.  g 

would  say,  have  a  record  in  the  international 
transactions  of  the  time.  But  then,  in  the 
reciprocal  action  of  the  governing  and  the 
governed,  some  revolutions  are  like  conquests. 
Our  revolution  of  1776  was  much  like  a  con- 
quest. Quite  so,  so  far  as  the  British  empire 
was  concerned.  Somebody,  or  somebodies, 
assumed  the  national  right  to  carry  on  war 
against  the  King  and  parliament  of  England, 
as  a  foreign  power  ;  and  the  issue  of  force  made 
that  somebody  or  those  somebodies  what  they 
had  undertaken  to  be  by  their  Declaration  of 
Independencec  But  there  was  very  little 
change  in  form  of  local  government.  Colonial 
laws  and  administrations  kept  their  course 
with  little  or  no  change,  so  far  as  the  lives  of 
private  citizens  were  concerned. 

But  if  there  has  been  no  conquest,  can  you 
be  certain  that  there  has  been  no  revolution 
since  the  adoption  of  the  constitution  ?  In 
any  country,  if  we  want  to  know  where  the 
government,  in  the  highest  sense,  is  to  be 
found — that  is,  upon  whose  will  the  laws  and 
administration  depend  for  existence — we  must 
go  back  to  the  last  conquest  or  to  the  last 
revolution,  if  there  is  no  conqueror  to  be  reck- 


io  The  Centennial 

oned  with.  So,  in  England,  the  writers  on 
history  and  public  law  have  referred  their  gov- 
ernment to  the  Revolution  of  1688,  and, 
before  that,  to  the  Norman  Conquest.  In 
France,  the  government  from  time  to  time  for 
the  last  century  has  been  known  by  the  latest 
of  the  successive  revolutions.  The  present 
Empire  of  Germany,  wherever  the  supreme 
power  may  be,  dates  from  the  last  mixture  of 
conquest  and  revolution. 

Revolution,  however,  is  not  legislative 
change  nor  any  alteration,  for  better  or  worse, 
in  the  administration  of  justice  between  man 
and  man,  nor  any  change  of  social  relations. 
The  century  now  past  has  witnessed  a  vast 
multitude  of  changes.  Changes  in  extent  of 
knowledge  of  nature's  conditions,  moral  as 
well  as  physical.  Laws  have  changed,  affect- 
ing men  in  many  material  and  moral  relations. 

"The  old  order  changeth,  giving  place  to  the  new." 

But  such  change  is  not  revolution.  It  is 
distinct  from  it,  even  when  accompanied  by  it. 
Change,  to  be  revolution,  must  be  change 
above  law  ;  in  that,  having  a  resemblance  to  a 
conquest.     Change  by  force  in  the  possession 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1 

of  that  power,  whatever  you  may  call  it,  which 
is  visibly  exercised  in  every  rule  submitted  to 
as  law ;  power,  the  visible  holding  of  which 
by  some  particular  person  or  persons  in  a  state 
or  nation  can  be  recognized  abroad,  as  well  as 
at  home,  and  which  is  called,  for  convenience, 
sovereign,  whether  the  holders  be  one,  or  a 
few,  or  many,  and  which  is  equally  absolute 
power,  whether  the  possession  be  called 
democratic  or  monarchic.  Revolutions  of  this 
sort  are  interruptions  of  something  which, 
until  then,  had  continued  from  some  earlier 
period.  If  there  has  been  a  revolution  of  this 
sort  here  since  1787,  there  is  no  century  of 
continuance  either  for  the  adoption  of  the  con- 
stitution or  for  the  government  then  brought 
into  being,  whatever  it  was.  Our  centennial 
recalls  only  a  deed,  and  the  memory  of  the 
dead. 

You  may  well  say — How  is  anybody  to 
know  that  there  has  been  a  revolution  ?  Or, 
which  is  nearly  the  same  thing,  you  may  ask — 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  change,  if  there  has 
been  any  ?  A  revolution,  to  be  one,  should 
have  produced  a  different  investiture  of  the 
ultimate  political  jurisdiction   from  that  which 


12  The  Centennial 

was  recognized  in  recognizing  the  adoption  it- 
self. Perhaps,  in  order  to  explain  this  to  a 
stranger,  it  would  be  necessary  that  he  should 
first  be  shown  what  the  investiture  had  been 
before  1787,  and  why  it  was  that  George 
Washington,  and  other  persons  whom  we  used 
to  think  respectable,  soon  afterwards  took  the 
responsibility  of  regarding  that  constitution  as 
law,  and  of  acting  as  a  government  according 
to  its  provisions.  But,  as  we  all  proposed  to 
celebrate  the  very  thing,  we  must  be  supposed 
to  have  known  all  about  this ;  and  those  who 
tell  you  of  a  revolution,  since  that  adoption,  if 
you  hear  of  any,  need  only  show  you  how 
things  now  are  and  you  will  yourselves  judge 
of  the  difference. 

Well,  as  to  any  revolution  during  the  past 
century,  perhaps  you  may  think  that  the  first 
to  know  of  such  revolution  would  be  those 
who  had  taken  a  solemn  oath  to  sustain  the 
constitution  of  the  country.  Sure  enough,  if 
by  the  term,  the  constitution  of  the  country, 
we  understand  the  possession  of  supreme 
political  power  above  law — the  political  fact 
upon  which  all  laws,  including  the  written  con- 
stitution for  general  government,  depend  ;  and 


of  a  Revolution.  1 3 

also,  if  any  can  be  found  who  have  taken  an 
oath  to  support  that  political  fact.  But  who 
has  ever  taken  such  an  oath?  A  few  natural- 
ized foreigners,  and  by  implication  only,  when 
renouncing  allegiance  to  a  former  sovereign  ; 
or  perhaps,  by  a  similar  implication  only, 
some  voters  under  military  supervision  in 
"border"  States  or  in  "  reconstructed  "  States, 
about  twenty-five  years  ago.  Do  you  think 
of  officers  of  the  government  ?  No  president, 
senator,  congressman,  judge  of  the  supreme 
court,  no  national  or  state  official  ever  took 
such  an  oath  before  1862.  An  implication  of 
some  sort  of  allegiance  may  be  discerned  in 
the  act  of  Congress  of  July  2,  1862,  requir- 
ing an  oath  framed  to  exclude  from  official 
position  all  who  had  been  in  the  Confederate 
service.  But  this  oath,  so  far  as  it  goes  beyond 
the  older  form,  was  rejected  as  unconstitu- 
tional by  the  Supreme  Court  in  Garland's  case. 
An  oath  of  allegiance,  as  known  in  other 
countries,  is  here  unknown.  Some  say  there 
cannot  be  such,  her.e :  that  there  is  no  sover- 
eign here  and  no  allegiance,  no  oath  of  allegi- 
ance possible.  Had  there  been  such  in  1787, 
the  civil  war,  such   as  it  was,  in  1 861-5,  would 


14  The  Centennial 

have  been  an  impossibility.  The  oath  to  sup- 
port the  Constitution — the  written  "  adopted  " 
Constitution  as  law — as  long  as  it  is  law — the 
only  oath  required  by  the  Constitution  itself, 
or  which  has,  thus  far,  the  sanction  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  is  a  totally  different  thing. 
Neither  revolution  nor  conquest,  necessarily 
interferes  with  such  an  oath.  Would  you  ex- 
pect the  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  now 
on  the  bench  to  say  outright,  if  it  were  the 
fact, — The  constitution  we  administer  as  law- 
to-day  derives  its  authority  now  from  a  politi- 
cal personality  distinct  and  different  from  that 
which  "  adopted "  it  in  1787,  whatever  that 
may  have  been  ?  Why  should  they  trouble 
themselves  to  think  about  it  more,  or  even  as 
much,  as  Jay  and  his  associates  at  the  first 
start?  Those  Justices  did  think,  more  or  less, 
and  wrangle  too,  more  or  less,  as  we  can  see  in 
the  reports,  about  the  political  question.  But 
this  question — whether  this  government  rested 
on  an  adequate  political  authority — was  one 
that  each  Justice  had  to  decide>  for  his  own 
satisfaction,  before  he  undertook  the  office  at 
all.  He  was  like  everybody  else,  as  to  that  ; 
and,  on  that  question,  his  opinion  was  of  no 


of  a  Revolution.  1 5 

more  authority  after  he  had  taken  his  seat  on 
the  bench  than  before.  But,  somehow,  they 
got  along  together  well  enough  in  applying 
the  instrument  as  law.  The  present  Justices 
will  tell  us  that  they  can  go  on  settling  dis- 
putes, according  to  the  Constitution  as  taw, 
just  as  well  as  their  predecessors.  They  don't, 
as  yet,  bother  with  the  question  of  a  revolution 
since  the  "  adoption."  Practically,  they  may 
say,  as  their  predecessors  since  1787  had  said  : 
Where's  the  use  ?  Somebody  adopts  the  con- 
stitution as  taw  to-day ;  and  that's  enough  for 
any  one  who,  in  accepting  the  office  of  apply- 
ing a  law,  assumes  that  it  is  derived  from  some 
existing  political  authority.  We  shall  prob- 
ably not  hear  of  any  revolution  from  any  man 
speaking  as  judge  of  any  court,  high  or  low  ; 
even  if,  as  private  citizen,  he  had  heard  talk  of 
such.  If  judges  are  necessarily  statesmen  as 
well  as  office-holders,  they  might  be  expected 
to  have  some  perception  of  the  question  ;  but 
their  opinions  about  the  matter,  as  matter  of 
fact  and  not  of  law,  are  only  testimony,  and, 
as  such,  important  according  to  the  extent  of 
perceptive  faculty  and  honesty,  but    110    pfiore. 


1 6  The  Centennial 

evidence  than  the  opinions  of  others  who  are 
not  officials. 

Well  then,  as  to  ordinary  testimony  as  to 
the  occurrence  of  events  like  revolutions :  let 
us  first  look  over  that  part  of  the  century 
which  many  of  us,  not  very  old,  may  call  our 
own  times — the  quarter  century  just  ended. 
May  not  anybody  who  could  have  seen  a  revo- 
lution in  that  time  be  asked  to  testify?  Some- 
times those  who  stand  further  off  can  see  a 
big  thing  better  than  any  who  have  been  sit- 
ting under  its  shadow.  What  if  we  should 
inquire  of  strangers,  of  foreign  publicists,  men 
whose  occupation  is  to  study  and  record  the 
changes  of  states  and  empires?  Now  we 
know  how  the  English — 

"  Ho,  ho,"  I  think  I  hear  you  say,  "  hold  on 
now;  we  want  none  of  that  there."  Natu- 
rally enough,  you  will  recall  the  attitude  taken 
by  their  public  men  in  1861  and  say  that  the 
governing  classes  desired  the  success  of  the 
secessionists,  from  interested  motives,  and 
that  their  organs  of  public  opinion  professed 
to  regard  each  State  at  liberty,  for  reasons 
judged  fit  by  itself,  to  withdraw  from  a  union 
which,  in  view  of  public  law,  was  only  an  in- 


of  a  Revolution.  i  7 

ternational  alliance.  So,  if  anyone  were  to 
cite  opinions  of  English  writers,  of  whatever 
reputation,  of  that  time  or  later,  holding  that 
the  repression  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  by 
the  then  administrative  government  and  its 
political  action,  afterwards,  in  reconstruction, 
was  revolutionary  as  regarded  the  preexisting 
political  constitution  of  the  whole  country, — 
we  ought  to  reject  such  testimony  with  con- 
tempt. 

You  would  say — one  might  as  well  ask  the 
opinion  of  Jeff  Davis  and  the  rest  of  the  Seces- 
sionists, and  of  those  at  the  North  who  were 
opposed  to  fighting  the  confederacy — those 
we  used  to  call  copperheads. 

Just  so.  We  may  reasonably  pretend  to 
know  better  than  foreigners,  what  our  union 
and  constitution  had  been  ;  and  you  may  say 
— Why  should  not  the  action  of  millions  of 
compatriots  who  gave  their  means,  and  of 
thousands  who  gave  their  lives  to  the  suppres- 
sion of  what  they  called  "  the  rebellion  "  be 
evidence  that  they  proposed  to  sustain  Union 
and  Constitution  as  they  had  before  existed? 
Yet  it  would  perhaps  be  rash  to  rely  on  this 
class  of  witnesses  for  a  full  concurrence  of 
2 


1 8  The  Centennial 

opinion  on  this  point :  or,  to  inquire  very 
closely  what  the  object  and  political  expecta- 
tion was,  in  the  minds  of  the  majority,  which 
can  be  stated  as  corresponding  with  their  own 
views  of  the  preexisting  location  of  political 
power.  It  might  be  awkward,  in  celebrating 
the  adoption  of  a  century-old  constitution  as 
if  it,  or  its  resulting  government,  had  con- 
tinued, to  take  a  census  of  opinion  as  to  the 
object  of  the  war  on  the  part  of  the  North  ; 
even  among  others  of  our  people  who,  to  all 
appearance,  were  distinguishable  from  either 
class  of  "our  misguided  fellow  citizens," — the 
rebels  or  their  sympathizers.  Would  it  be 
advisable  to  take  an  estimate  of  those  who, 
agreeing  or  disagreeing  with  the  Southern 
people  in  their  views  of  the  political  constitu- 
tion, upheld  the  government  in  the  war  solely 
on  account  of  the  anti-slavery  feeling ;  of  those 
who,  not  caring  a  red  cent  for  your  "adopted" 
constitution,  which  for  years  they  had  called 
"  a  covenant  with  hell,"  had  themselves  urged 
separation  on  the  part  of  the  North ;  who,  on 
the  same  principle,  were  in  favor  of  letting  the 
"  wayward  sisters  go  in  peace  ;  "  of  those  who 
recognized  a  right  of  State  secession  for  any 


of  a  Revolution.  1 9 

motive  not  as  immoral  as  that  of  sustaining 
negro-slavery,  and  those  who,  as  the  war  was 
protracted,  made  emancipation  and  the  abro- 
gation of  all  laws  founded  on  a  distinction  of 
color  the  condition  of  their  further  supporting 
the  government? 

How  many  were  there,  besides,  who,  caring 
nothing  for  the  negro  question,  regarded  the 
Confederacy  as  having  become  foreign,  by 
their  States'  capacity  to  break  from  the  obliga- 
tion of  a  federal  compact,  and  who  urged  the 
war  by  the  Northern  States,  as  an  interna- 
tional war  to  compel  involuntary  reunion,  for 
the  sake  of  their  own  political  and  material 
interest,  regardless  of  any  right  founded  on 
the  adopted  constitution  ?  How  many  were 
there  then  who  said,  as  thousands  would  say 
to-day — I  may  be  inconsistent  in  supporting 
the  government  in  this  particular  case,  but, 
right  or  wrong,  I  would  go  with  my  own 
State  ? 

If  such  a  census  of  individual  opinions  could 
be  taken,  we  might  infer  that,  whatever  "  the 
war  for  the  union  "  may  have  been  in  its  re- 
sult, it  could  not   have  been  on^  in  which  a 


26  The  Centennial 

majority  of  the  people  of  the  whole   country 
proposed  to  sustain  our  constitution  of  1787. 

But,  leaving  all  such  defenders  of  "  the  union 
as  it  was,  and  the  constitution  as  it  is "  to 
reconcile  themselves  to  themselves,  when  they 
join  in  our  centennial,  how  many  are  there  to- 
day at  the  end  of  the  quarter  century,  promi- 
nent persons,  who  have  claimed — as  the  result 
of  the  war — not  the  sustentation  ol  that  adop- 
tion but  its  destruction  ;  who  tell  us  plainly 
that  a  change  has  taken  place ;  a  political 
change ;  more  than  one  of  laws  and  statutes, 
of  measures  and  of  men,  being  a  shifting  in 
the  possession  of  supreme  unitary  power  :  not 
merely  a  modified  distribution  of  power,  agreed 
upon  between  a  "  North  "  and  a  "  South  "  to 
enlarge  the  powers  of  a  general  government, 
nor  yet  by  a  voluntary  surrender  of  specific 
powers  by  the  requisite  number  of  States,  in 
the  way  of  Constitutional  Amendment,  but  a 
change  which  was  compulsory  as  to  all  the 
States,  Northern  or  Southern,  "  loyal"  or  "  dis- 
loyal"; placing  all  independent  political  power 
in  one  central  hand  ;  to  be  found  somewhere, 
where  it  was  not  before  ;  a  hand,  now,  not 
under    but    above    the    written    constitution ; 


of  a  Revolution.  2  1 

because  now  above  the  consent   of  any  or  all 
the  States. 

There  are  thousands,  tens  of  thousands 
among  us  who  are  industriously  nursing  this 
notion,  more  or  less  distinctly  ;  who  rejoice 
and  glorify  themselves  as  good  patriots,  and 
that  in  all  sincerity,  in  trying  to  believe  that 
this  change  was  effected  by  force.  So  that,  as 
to  the  question  whether  the  constitution  framed 
in  1787  has  been  superseded  during  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  by  a  revolution, — there  is 
a  pretty  loud  showing  of  most  sweet  voices, 
discordant  enough  except  as  to  the  fact  that 
there  was  a  revolution  about  twenty-five  years 
ago,  some  recognizing  it  with  scorn  and  hate, 
while  still  cherishing  the  memory  of  a  lost 
cause  ;  some  exalting  it  as  a  measure  of  govern- 
ment, extraordinary  indeed,  but  justified  simply 
as  vindicating  their  own  private  theories  of 
public  morality  ;  and  others,  thoroughly  and 
with  full  consideration,  accepting  it  as  a  change 
bringing  grander  hopes  to  themselves,  to  their 
children  and  to  their  countrymen.  Pleased  or 
displeased,  they,  or  you  perhaps,  or  a  majority 
of  us,  are  a  multitude  of  witnesses  agreed  as 


22  The  Centennial 

to  the  fact  ;  ourselves  corroborating  the  ver- 
dict of  English  observers,  whose  record  of  their 
times,  whether  we  may  like  it  or  not,  will  be 
noticed  in  making  up  the  world-history. 

Do  you  suppose  that  only  the  unreflecting 
vulgar,  dazzled  by  the  military  display  of  civil 
war,  and  crying  ha,  ha !  like  Job's  horse,  amid 
the  thunders  of  the  captains  and  the  shoutings, 
are  the  ones  to  talk  about  a  revolution  since 
1861  ? 

Well,  then,  you  may  call  it  what  you  please  ; 
but,  if  the  constitution  adopted  a  century  ago, 
or  the  form  of  government  then  first  organized, 
has,  by  any  means  whatever,  been  essentially 
changed,  either  for  good  or  for  evil,  your  anni- 
versaries of  adoption  came  to  an  end  some  time 
before  September  17,  1887.  It  was  a  very  ap- 
posite comment,  just  after  that  date,  of  a  very 
influential  critical  authority,  with  regard  to 
this  same  question  of  the  existence  of  a  cen- 
tennial of  continuance: 

"  It  is  rather  curious  that  amid  the  numerous 
comments  which  the  celebration  of  the  Consti- 
tution has  called  forth,  so  little  mention  has 
been  made  of  the  failure  of   the  instrument  to 


of  a  Revolution.  23 

overcome  the  main  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
its  original  framers."* 

After  a  summary  statement  of  the  discor- 
dant influences  in  different  sections,  arising 
mainly  from  different  views  of  negro  slavery, 
the  writer  remarks  :  — 

"  When  these  things  are  taken  into  account 
we  think  it  will  be  generally  admitted  that  the 
Constitution  may  fairly  be  considered  as  hav- 
ing existed  in  what  may  be  called  a  provisional 
or  experimental  stage  down  to  1861,  and  that 
a  very  large  share  of  whatever  glory  is  due  to 
its  frame rs  belongs  of  right  to  the  men  of  the 
generation  now  passing  away.  They,  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  resolved  that  they  would  cure 
its  defects  at  whatever  cost,  and  put  it  into  an 
undeniably  permanent  shape,  and  did  so  amid 
difficulties  compared  to  which  those  of  the 
convention  of  1787  were  a  mere  trifle." 

And,  farther  on: — 

"  Consider  again  the  condition  of  doubt  in 
which  the  old  Constitution  left  a  large  part  of 
the  population  as  to  the  real  seat  of  sovereignty 
in  the  United  States It  fell  to  the  lot 

*The  Nation:  Sep.  22,  18S7.  Editorial  "Some  Things 
Overlooked  at  the  Centennial." 


24  The  Centennial 

of  the  men  of  1861  to  settle  once  for  all 
whether  the  Federal  Government  was  a  na- 
tional government  or  not,  and  they  settled  it 
at  a  cost  from  which  the  men  of  1787  would 
undoubtedly  have  shrunk  in  dismay.  They 
gave  the  Constitution  that  final  sanction  with- 
out which  no  government  is  ever  strong  or 
ever  can  command  general  obedience — the 
sanction,  namely,  which  comes  from  the-knowl- 
edge  that  it  has  irresistible  physical  force  at 
its  back." 

And,  farther  on  : — 

"  The  men  who  revised  the  Constitution  in 
1863-5  and  who  have  given  it  to  us  in  a  shape 
which  will  probably  undergo  no  great  change 
as  long  as  the  social  organization  continues 
what  it  is  at  present,  did  not  hesitate  to  ask  the 
people  to  say  whether  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment had  that  final  sanction  without  which  no 
government,  however  deftly  framed  on  paper, 
can  properly  be  considered  a  government  at 
all.  They  got  the  answer  they  expected  and 
desired,  but  it  required  enormous  wisdom  and 
courage  to  ask  the  question  boldly,  and  to 
turn  the  answer  to  its  proper  account." 

And  in  conclusion,  a  very  logical  conclusion 


oj  a  Revolution.  25 

from  the  historical  statement  thus  given,  is  the 
writer's  remark — far  more  to  the  point  than 
all  the  splurge  at  Philadelphia,  last  September. 

"  In  view  of  all  this,  it  seems  to  us  as  if  a 
very  large  part  of  whatever  fame  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Federal  Government  reflects  on  the 
American  people,  is  due  to  those  who  gave  the 
organic  law  its  final  revision  ;  and  we  think  it 
by  no  means  unlikely  that  those  who  celebrate 
the  next  centennial  of  the  Constitution  will  be 
disposed  to  put  the  date  in  1865  rather  than 
in  1787,  or  will,  at  all  events,  hesitate  between 
the  two  years." 

All  this  is  well  enough,  as  to  the  point  of  a 
continuing  centenary.  But  it  is  not  so  strong 
in  describing  the  event  as  a  "  revision,"  "  final  " 
or  otherwise  of  the  "organic  law";  if  by 
"law"  here  we  are  to  understand  what  we  all 
understand  as  law.  It  is  a  paltering  statement 
to  say  that  somebody,  designated  as  "  the  men 
of  1861,"  or  "the  men  of  the  generation  now 
passing  away,"  "  revised " — fortunately  for 
them,  it  appears,  with  the  approval  of  the 
critic — the  written  constitution  of  1787,  by 
getting  some  new  provisions  engrossed  in  it, 
to   increase    the    authority  of   "  the  former  (?) 


26  The  Centennial 

Federal  Government."  For  it  is  not  so  much 
that  a  written  constitution  has  been  revised  or 
changed  or  destroyed,  by  written  Amend- 
ments, as  that  the  adoption  of  any  constitution 
has  changed.  Our  constitution,  as  law,  sur- 
vives or  revives  by  resting  on  a  new 
authority,  as  it  might  in  the  case  of  a  con- 
quest. It  is  now  for  us  to  hold  that,  while 
good  enough  for  the  present  at  least,  as  a 
law,  the  authority  to  which  it  had  been  re- 
ferred, before  1861 — whatever  that  may  have 
been — had  proved  inadequate  to  the  general 
purpose  of  the  good  of  the  whole  cotintry  or  the 
Union,  taken  in  that  sense.  It  is  to  be  held, 
that  with  that  basis  for  the  written  constitu- 
tion which  as  "  adoption  " — whatever  that  may 
have  been — we  proposed  to  celebrate,  last  Sep- 
tember, the  maintenance  of  the  Union  in  that 
sense,  was  impossible,  and  that  as  this  Union, 
in  that  sense,  has  actually  been  sustained  in 
1 86 [-5,  some  other  authority  for  that  consti- 
tution— some  authority  not  known  in  the 
adoption  of  1787 — was  to  be  found,  or,  rather, 
has  been  found  in  the  fact — the  political  fact 
above  law — that  the  persons  who  from  1861  to 
JS65    formed    the   administrative   government 


of  a  Revolution.  2  7 

established  under  the  adopted  constitution  of 
1787,  with  their  partisans,  had — as  "  the  men 
of  1863-5,"  if  you  like — exercised  and  held, 
independently  of  such  constitution,  all  powers 
necessary  to  the  continued  existence,  in  their 
successors,  of  a  government  absolute,  or  with- 
out living  superiors  ;  becoming  a  government 
as  political  fact  above  law ;  the  constitution, 
thereafter  being  theirs,  or  resting  on  their  will 
— on  their  adoption. 

As  a  consequence,  the  powers  held  by  the 
Government  being  held  as  of  sovereign  right, 
are  no  longer  "  granted  "  and  the  powers  held 
by  the  States,  severally,  are  no  longer  "  re- 
served "  as  of  their  sovereign  will,  but  have 
become  allowed,  permitted,  or  as  if  granted  to 
them,  yet  not  absolutely  ;  but  subject  to  recall 
at  the  will  of  a  new  possessor  of  absolute,  en- 
tire sovereignty,  whose  only  representative,  so 
far  as  it  can  itself  be  less  than  sovereign,  is  a 
Central  Government,  which  has  replaced  the 
former  Federal  Government  under  the  written 
constitution. 

We  may  gather  utterance  of  such  opinions 
in  abundance  out  of  the  speeches  of  leading 
public  men,  especially  of  such  as  were  promi- 


28  The  Centennial 

nent  in  defending  the  measures  of  the  Govern- 
ment during  the  Reconstruction  years;  and  in 
scattered  publications  of  various  sorts,  such  as 
reviews  and  magazine  articles,  political  trea- 
tises or  fragmentary  essays,  shortly  after  that 
time.  But  you  can  hardly  take  up  any  news- 
paper supporting  one  of  the  two  greater  po- 
litical parties — naturally  enough  that  party, 
which  for  good  or  for  evil,  held  the  ostensible 
power  of  the  Federal  Government  during  the 
period  when  it  must  have  taken  place — without 
finding  the  assumption  of  such  a  revolution. 
If  you  do  not  find  it  also  recognized  by  the 
organs  of  the  opposite  party,  it  is  because, 
though  its  adherents  at  the  North  supported 
the  cause  of  the  Union,  as  understood  by 
themselves,  they  never  felt  themselves  com- 
mitted to  approval  of  results  which  were  due 
mainly  to  views  of  the  nature  of  government 
in  general  and  political  expediency  held  by 
the  party  then  in  power,  rather  than  to  any 
construction  of  the  written  constitutional  law. 
Yet  if  any  fundamental  change  has  been  ac- 
complished, it  will  remain  independently  of 
pnrties  or  of  anybody's  recognition.  You 
:  i  ;y  individually  be  of  either  party  or  of  no 


of  a  Revolution.  29 

party,  but,  if  such  revolution  was  the  fact — 
what  centennial  was  there  to  celebrate  in 
1887?  Where  was  the  continuing  event  that 
should  still  be  on  hand  after  one  hundred 
years  ? 

Well,  this  has  been  a  century  for  revolu- 
tions. Even  if  this  was  a  smashing  of  the 
political  constitution,  that  has  taken  place  be- 
fore the  eyes  of  the  present  generation,  why 
complain  as  if  something  beyond  the  common 
lot  had  befallen  us?  If  it  is  the  fact,  why 
hesitate  to  say  so  ? 

But  we  have  wandered  a  little  from  the 
main  inquiry  which  we  proposed,  and  which  is 
not  settled  by  our  rejection  of  a  revolution  in 
1861-5.  For  that  inquiry  related  to  a  period 
of  time  of  which  the  last  twenty-five  years  is 
only  a  quarter  part.  It  was  whether  at  any 
time  since  1787  revolution  had  interrupted  the 
continuance  of  that  political  action  whose  cent- 
ury of  existence  we  would  have  celebrated 
last  September.  To  prove  a  revolution  since 
1861  would  be  an  answer  to  the  point.  But 
there  were  three-quarters  of  a  century  before 
that  date,  counting"  from  1787.  How  would  it 
apply  to  our  inquiry  if,  some  time  in  the  course 


30  The  Centennial 

of  those  seventy-five  years,  a  revolution  had 
taken  place  which  had  already  produced  that 
very  political  status,  that  identical  location  of 
supreme  power,  which  these  various  witnesses 
in  our  own  generation  think  they  saw  taking 
place  only  since  the  beginning  of  the  civil 
war?  Convenient,  it  might  be  thought,  for 
those  at  the  North  who  would  shun  the  ap- 
parent inconsistency  involved  in  the  accept- 
ance of  a  revolution,  through  their  share  in 
that  war  by  which  they  claimed  to  have  sus- 
tained the  then  existing  constitution.  The 
discovery  of  such  a  revolution  at  some  date 
earlier  than  1861  would  stop  the  mouths  of 
captious  English  and  French  who  call  the 
Northerners  self-stultified  in  talking  of  a 
Southern  "  rebellion."  Convenient,  perhaps, 
for  that  particular  purpose  ;  but  can  it  be  so 
for  us  who  proposed  to  glorify  the  centennial 
of  an  existence  since  1787?  Now,  let  us  see! 
Supposing  that  such  a  revolution  had  at 
some  moment  in  those  seventy-five  years  be- 
fore 1 86 1  already  taken  place.  Well,  if  that 
moment  was  not  far,  not  so  very  far  from  the 
date  of  what  we  had  called  the  "adoption  "  of 
the   constitution,   we  might  have  a  centennial 


of  a  Revolution.  3 1 

celebration  for  that  revolution  which  would  so 
nearly  coincide  with  the  centennial  of  the 
adoption,  supposing  there  was  such  a  thing, 
that  one  could  hardly  distinguish  them  apart, 
at  this  distance  of  time.  Now,  if  this  revolu- 
tion might  have  occurred  at  any  time  after  the 
century  began,  why  not  just  a  year  or  so  af- 
ter? why  not  a  few  months,  a  few  weeks  or 
days?  why  not  the  same  day — one  in  the 
morning  and  the  other  in  the  afternoon? 
Why  !  they  might  have  been  so  close  in  point 
of  time  as  to  have  become  so  mixed  up  in  the 
historical  record  that  this  important  revolution 
was  hardly,  if  at  all,  noticed  at  the  moment, 
in  consequence  of  the  fuss  that  was  made 
about  the  more  visible  ceremonial  of  what  our 
fathers  called  "  adoption,"  whatever  that  was, 
that  had  for  seventy-five  years  before  1861 
appeared  as  the  thing  done  and  the  thing  con- 
tinuing !  But  now,  you  see,  if  we  can  get  the 
date  of  the  last  revolution  fixed  for  us  by  this 
computation,  it  saves  our  century  of  continu- 
ance of  the  adoption,  to  celebrate  in  the  year 
1887,  assuming  now  that  you  are  not  going  to 
believe  that  there  has  been  a  revolution  since 


32  The  CentennLil 

1861  to  interrupt  the  continuance  of  that  we 
called  the  adoption  of   1787. 

Will  you  call  this  "  trifling  with  the  sub- 
ject?" Well;  we,  who  trifle  thus,  trifle  in 
good  company.  Do  not  condemn  us,  for  sav- 
ing your  anniversaries  in  this  way,  without 
looking  at  our  respectability — ours,  who  tell 
you  of  the  revolution  of  1787.  There  -are 
more,  perhaps,  among  us  than  you  may  think 
of  the  literary  or  college  fellows,  as  you  may 
sarcastically  call  them,  who  can  do  this  sort  of 
thing  and  put  it  in  print. 

You  think  yourselves  familiar  with  history 
— with  the  history  of  your  own  country,  at 
least.  You  learned  about  the  revolution  of 
1776  at  home;  by  the  fireside,  from  fathers, 
from  grandfathers ;  perhaps  from  great  grand- 
fathers who  could  have  almost  seen  the  thing 
themselves ;  and  they  had  not  seen  and 
you  have  not  heard  of  any  revolution  after 
that.  You  say  you  have  read  our  histories, 
the  standard  authors.  There's  Bancroft  ; — 
that  he  does  not  tell  you  of  a  revolution  in 
1787  or  thereabouts,  and  in  his  recent  volumes 
specially  devoted  to  the  History  of  the  Consti- 
tution,   in    the    opening    sentence    says    that 


Oj  a   Revolution. 


oo 


"when  thirteen  republics  formed  themselves 
into  one  commonwealth,  there  was  no  revolt 
against  the  past,  but  a  persistent  and  healthy 
progress."  And  so  with  all  those  who  before 
him  had  written  on  the  history  of  the  country. 
Well,  without  wishing  to  cast  a  slur  on  that 
venerable  man  and  his  contemporaries  or  their 
predecessors,  the  fact  is — that  the  nearer  a 
man  lived  to  those  times  the  less  he  may  have 
known  about  them  ! 

But  before  looking  about  for  any  revolution 
in  1787,  coincident  with  "  the  adoption,"  it  is 
interesting  to  reflect,  that  if  there  was  any,  at 
that  time,  it  was  not  the  first  after  that  of 
1776  ;  at  least  not  if,  for  this  occasion,  we  allow 
an  usurpation  to  be  called  a  revolution  ;  which 
last  term  we  generally  reserve  for  changes  of 
which  we  approve,  employing  usurpation  to 
designate  those  we  discountenance.  With 
this  understanding,  we  must  know  that  there 
had  been  a  revolution  after  the  separation 
from  Great  Britain,  that  is  between  1776  and 
1787.  Those  thirteen  "States" — as  we  may, 
just  for  once,  call  them,  for  convenience, — 
which  in  the  Declaration  of  1776  were  spoken  of 
as  unitedly  sovereign  and  independent,  and  in 
3 


34  The  Centennial 

1783,  in  the  treaty  of  Paris  were  acknowl- 
edged, by  the  former  sovereign  of  thirteen  col- 
onies, as  holding  in  union  those  powers  in  war 
and  in  peace  which  characterize  a  national  ex- 
istence, "  had  usurped  the  powers  of  the  na- 
tion." Because,  as  we  must  now  perceive, 
those  thirteen  colonies  had  not  been,  because 
in  the  nature  of  political  science  they  could 
not  have  been,  the  actors  against  Great  Britain 
in  that  revolution.  They  vapored  immensely 
in  calling  a  Congress,  sending  delegates,  in- 
structing them,  declaring  this  and  that.  But 
really  they  did  not  achieve  independence  or 
anything  else  of  a  political  nature.  They  were 
no  parties  in  the  war.  A  mob  of  men,  which, 
for  grandeur,  we  must  call  The  People  or  a 
Nation,  forcibly  repressing  the  voices  of  others, 
citizens  or  subjects  like  themselves,  who  might 
differ  on  the  question  of  their  common  inter- 
ests, assumed  the  sovereign  right  of  war  and 
so  constituted  themselves  the  possessors  of 
national  dominion  in  those  Colonial  territories. 
The  colony  or  State,  or  its  government  repre- 
senting colony  or  State,  we  must  understand, 
had  nothing  to  do  with  this  so-called  revolu- 
tion against  the  crown  of   England.     In    fact, 


of  a  Revolution.  35 

this  was  neither  rebellion  nor  revolution  ;  least 
of  all  was  it  such  on  the  part  of  any  pre-exist- 
ing political  personality  whatever.  We  have 
learned  from  good  authority,*  what  it  was — 
"  It  was  the  development  of  a  sentiment  of 
national  unity  and  independence  throughout 
the  population  resident  within  the  thirteen 
colonies  along  the  Atlantic  coast  from  New 
Hampshire  to  Georgia;  then  the  assembly  in 
Philadelphia  of  the  representatives  of  this  en- 
tire population  .  .  .  this  assembly  of  the  young 
Nation's  representatives  it  was  which  protested 
first,  then  waged  war  against  the  royal  sov- 
ereignty and  government ;  and  finally  after  two 
years  of  existence  declared,  as  the  representa- 
tive of  the  whole  People  and  by  the  authority 
of  the  whole  People,  the  independence  of  the 
United  Colonies.  What  now  was  the  relation 
of  the  individual  colony  to  the  Nation,  and  to 
the  Nation's  representative — the  Continental 
Congress  ?    The  united  People  had,  through  the 

*  The  Political  Science  Quarterly.  A  Review  Devoted  to 
the  Historical,  Statisical  and  Comparative  Study  of  Politics, 
Economics  and  Public  Law.  Edited  by  the  Faculty  of  Polit- 
ical Science  of  Columbia  College.  Article  The  American 
Commonwealth.     Vol.  I.  pp.  18,  19.     (March,  1886). 


36  The  Centennial 

Continental  Congress,  asserted  their  sov- 
ereignty. They  were  organized  only  in  that 
Congress.  They  [that  is,  this  "  People  "]  had 
not  as  yet  made  any  constitution  vesting 
powers  or  reserving  powers  or  withholding 
powers." 

Consequently,  as  we  must  now  see, — 
"  We  must,  therefore,  determine  the  powers 
of  the  Continental  Congress  by  regarding  it  as 
the  organization  of  the  People  and  the  suc- 
cessor to  the  British  Government.  In  the 
former  capacity  it  was  sovereign  constituting 
power.  In  the  latter  it  was  central  govern- 
ment, authorized  by  the  general  principles  of 
the  devolution  of  powers  to  succeed  to  all  of  the 
powers  exercised  by  the  King  and  Parliament 
over  and  in  the  colonies  ;  viz.,  the  functions 
of  international  government  ;  of  intercolonial 
government  ;  and  the  right  of  participation  in 
the  purely  internal  government  of  most  of  the 
colonies,  through  the  veto  power  upon  the 
acts  of  their  legislatures,  the  ultimate  revision 
of  the  decisions  of  their  higher  courts  and  the 
appointment  of  their  governors  and  chief  judi- 
cial officers.  In  the  former  capacity,  it  might 
and  should    have    constituted  a  new  system  of 


of  a  Revolution.  37 

governmental  organs,  both  central  and  local, 
with  such  reservations  of  rights  and  distribu- 
tions of  powers  as  it  judged  conducive  to  the 
welfare  of  the  whole  people  ;  while  in  the  latter 
it  should  have  governed  with  all  the  powers  of 
both  crown  and  Parliament  until  the  new 
system  was  ready." 

No  matter  about  the  histories  we  have  read 
in  our  school-boy  days — 

"  By  all  the  reasons  of  political  science  and 
the  natural  devolution  of  powers,  this  was  the 
position  of  the  Nation  and  its  representative, 
the  Continental  Congress,  on  the  one  side  and 
of  the  commonwealths  and  their  local  govern- 
mental establishments  on  the  other;  and  there 
were  at  the  moment  no  other  reasons  and 
norms  by  which  to  measure  these  relations." 

But  most  unfortunately,  as  it  now  appears, 
though  by  "the  permission  and  advice"  of 
this  sovereign  Congress,*  "  conventions  of  the 
people  resident  within  the  several  colonies  be- 
gan the  work  of  framing  paper  constitutions 
for  their  local  governments,  while  the  Conti- 
nental   Congress,  busy  with  the  waging  of   the 

*  p.  s.  Q.,  I.  p.  20. 


$8  The   Centennial 

war  to  maintain  the  declared  independence, 
delayed  the  construction  of  a  constitution  for 
a  permanent  central  government  which  should 
define  the  relation  of  the  Nation  and  its  gen- 
eral representative  to  the  states  and  the  state 
governments.  This  was  the  fatal  error.  .  .  . 
So  that  when  the  plan  of  the  new  central  gov- 
ernment, drafted  by  the  Continental  Congress 
itself,  came  to  be  established  in  178 1,  it  pre- 
sented the  system  of  separately  sovereign  and 
independent  states — sovereign  and  independ- 
ent now  as  against  each  other  and  not  as  the 
Declaration  had  it,  unitedly  sovereign  and  in- 
dependent as  against  Great  Britain — and  con- 
nected with  each  other  by  a  league  of  friend- 
ship." 

That  is,  as  severally  sovereign.  Some  of  us 
may  think  that  it  has  been  only  as  "  unitedly 
sovereign  and  independent  "  that  the  States 
have  ever  existed  at  all.  But  the  quotation 
certainly  gives  the  common  idea  of  the  so- 
called  Confederation. 

"  From  provinces  of  the  British  Crown, 
these  colonial  establishments  had  now  become, 
in  name  and  theory  at  least,  sovereign  and  in- 
dependent States.     Here  certainly  was   muta- 


of  a  Revolution.  39 

bility,  construction  and  destruction.  No  one 
can  possibly  claim  that  the  relation  of  local  to 
central  power  in  our  system  had  not  undergone 
within  less  than  a  decade  a  complete  trans- 
formation." 

No  indeed  ;  not  if  the  state  of  things  at 
the  beginning  of  the  decade  was  such  as  has 
just  been  disclosed  "  from  the  stand-point  of 
political  science."  Here  was  the  "  usurpation." 
Now  for  the  "  revolution." 

"  So  far  as  the  paper  constitution  [of  the 
Confederation]  was  concerned,  this  system  of 
sovereign  states  in  league  was  made  immuta- 
ble. In  fact,  it  lasted  just  eight  years,  and 
was  then  overthrown  by  revolution."* 

Yes,  by  revolution — the  thing  we  called  by 
the  softy  name — adoption  of  the  constitution  ! 

"  The  states  had  usurped  the  powers  of  the 
Nation.  They  had  planted  themselves  upon 
ground  false  to  philosophy,  false  to  history, 
and  false  to  physical  and  ethnical  relations. 
These  powers  must  be  wrenched  from  them, 
and  they  forced  back  into  their  proper  subor- 
dination.    But  how  could  it    be    done?     The 

, — — . c- 

*  P.  S.  Q.  I.  p.  21. 


40  The  Centennial 

existing  law  provided  ....  At  length  two 
far-seeing  spirits  divined  the  means  of  escape 
from  the  unbearable  situation.  These  two 
were  Bowdoin  and  Hamilton,  and  their  argu- 
ment was : — The  states  have  usurped  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  People  of  the  Nation  and  the 
People  must  reassert  their  sovereign  power. 
But  this  was  revolution — revolution  against 
usurpation.  Bowdoin  boldly  proclaimed  it  by 
securing  from  the  [usurping?  What  the  deuce 
had  the  usurpers  to  do  in  that  galley  ?]  Massa- 
chusetts legislature  an  instruction  to  the  dele- 
gates sent  by  it  to  the  Confederate  Congress 
to  move  in  that  body  for  the  summoning  of  a 
convention  of  the  people  of  the  whole  Con- 
federacy to  revise  the  constitution.  But  these 
delegates  were  so  frightened  at  the  revolution- 
ary character  of  the  proposition,  that  they  dis- 
obeyed the  command  of  the  legislature  which 
sent  and  instructed  them,  and  never  presented 
the  project  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
more  politic  Hamilton  had  recourse  to  one 
subterfuge  and  another ;  until  at  last,  chiefly 
through  his  shrewd  manipulation  of  opportuni- 
ties, the  best  talent  of  the  Nation  was  brought 
together  in  secret   convention,  and  persuaded 


of  a  Revolution.  41 

to  frame  a  constitution  withdrawing  from  the 
states  the  greater  part  of  the  usurped  powers, 
and  to  make  an  appeal  to  the  people  of  the 
Nation  to  establish  it.  The  people  answered 
with  sufficient  unanimity  '  Yea,  and  the  Na- 
tion reasserted  its  sovereignty." 

You  see  that  we  can  give  you  brave  words 
for  our  claiming  that  no  revolution  has  taken 
place  since  the  adoption  of  the  constitution, 
because  that  "  adoption  "  was  itself  a  revolu- 
tion which  made  the  revolution  which  some 
people  think  they  saw  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago  an  impossibility  ;  the  needful  thing  hav- 
ing been  done  seventy-five  years  before,  which 
is  all  we  need  to  consider  to  save  our  centen- 
nial for  us. 

This  historical  exposure  of  "usurpation"  as 
the  foundation  of  the  existence  of  the  original 
states,  which  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  justifica- 
tion for  revolution  in  the  adoption  of  the  con- 
stitution of  1787,  is  not  altogether  new.  It 
was  referred  to  by  Pomeroy,  with  his  sanction, 
as  having  been  stated  by  Dr.  Mcllvaine  of 
Princeton,  writing  in  1 861.  But  the  statements 
which  have  just  been  recited  are  particularly 
noticeable    as    appearing    shortly   before     the 


42  The  Centennial 

date  which  we  have  selected  for  our  centennial. 
These  too  are  especially  worthy  of  our  atten- 
tion as  being  found  in  a  Political  Science  Quar- 
terly, published  under  the  auspices  of  one  of 
our  oldest  Universities,  established  before  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  in  the  city  where 
the  government  contemplated  under  the  con- 
stitution was  inaugurated  on  the  30th  of  April, 
1789,  and  where  fifty  years  afterwards  the 
semi-centennial  of  that  event  was  commemo- 
rated by  an  address  delivered  before  the  New 
York  Historical  Society  by  John  Quincy 
Adams. 

In  that  address  "  the  old  man  eloquent," 
with  whom  perhaps  this  view  of  the  adoption, 
as  a  revolution  against  usurping  States,  origi- 
nated, presented  the  argument  in  an  elaborate 
restatement  of  our  history  from  the  colonial 
era,  summing  up  his  conclusion  in  this  passage  : 

"  And  on  that  day  of  which  you  now  com- 
memorate the  fiftieth  anniversary,  on  that 
30th  day  of  April,  1789,  was  the  mighty  revolu- 
tion, not  only  in  the  affairs  of  our  own  coun- 
try, but  in  the  principles  of  government  over 
civilized  man  accomplished.  The  revolution 
itself  was  a  work  of  thirteen  years,   and  had 


of  a  Revolution.  43 

never  been  completed  until  that  day.  The 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  are  parts  of  one 
consistent  whole,  founded  upon  one  and  the 
same  theory  of  government  ;  then  new,  not  as  a 
theory,  for  it  had  been  working  itself  into  the 
mind  of  man  for  many  ages,  and  had  been  es- 
pecially expounded  in  the  writings  of  Locke, 
but  had  never  been  adopted  by  a  great  na- 
tion." 

Mr.  Adams'  view  is  not  essentially  different 
from  that  given  us  by  our  College.  There  is 
some  distinction,  so  far  as  the  former  presents 
the  revolution  as  the  continuous  event  of  thir- 
teen years  and  the  latter  indicates  the  alterna- 
tion of  a  "  usurpation,"  sandwiched  between 
two  revolutions.  If  the  revolutionary  doings 
of  1776  were  directed  against  the  King  of  Eng- 
land and  he  had  got  himself  out  of  the  scrape 
by  the  treaty  of  1783,  the  tail-end  of  Mr. 
Adams'  thirteen  years  of  revolution,  finished 
up  by  "the  Adoption,"  ought  to  have  been 
against  somebody  else. 

But  Adams  was  equally  contemptuous  of 
the  State  existence.  In  the  same  address  he 
says  : — 


44  The  Centennial 

"  Where  then  did  each  State  get  the  sover- 
eignty, freedom  and  independence  which  the 
articles  of  Confederation  declare  it  retains? 
Not  from  the  whole  people  of  the  whole 
union,  not  from  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence, not  from  the  people  of  the  State  itself. 
It  was  assumed  by  agreement  between  the 
legislatures  of  the  several  States  and  their 
delegates  in  Congress,  without  authority  from, 
or  consultation  with,  the  people  at  all." 

Mrs.  E.  B.  Browning  has  said, — 


Every  age, 


Through  being  beheld  too  close,  is  ill-discerned 
By  those  who  have  not  lived  past  it." 

This  is  applicable  in  the  present  inquiry. 
During  the  century  just  ending,  intellectual 
progress,  at  least  the  acquisition  of  learning 
about  matters  and  things  in  general,  has  been 
wonderfully  enlarged  and  diffused.  Especially 
has  the  history  of  the  past  received  new  illu- 
mination. We  know  lots  of  things  about  what 
had  happened  and  even  about  what  had  not 
happened  long  before  our  grandfathers  lived, 
that  they  never  dreamed  of.  Why  should  not 
we  know  what   happened  and  what  didn't  hap- 


of  a  Revolution.  45 

pen  in  their  own  time  better  than  they  could. 
The  prehistoric  mounds  have  been  opened, 
dead  tongues  forced  to  speak,  hieroglyphics 
have  been  read.  But  these  things  are  essen- 
tially of  the  old  method  ;  like  accidental  finds 
of  musty  title-deeds  in  a  worm-eaten  oaken 
chest.  The  critical  school  of  history  has  come 
into  being  and  the  Positive  Philosophy  been 
applied  to  history,  since  Bancroft  and  the 
other  historians  you  know  of,  began  to  tell 
their  plain  unvarnished  tale.  Myths  can  now 
be  explained  and  made  to  yield  historic  ve- 
racity. Our  land  may  be  too  young  for  buried 
cities,  battered  inscriptions,  and  unknown 
tongues  of  the  past;  but  we  may  have  had 
our  folk-lore  and  myths  as  well  as  people  in 
other  lands.  The  fathers — four  generations 
ago — would  swallow  almost  any  sort  of  myth, 
for  real  history.  They  lived  in  our  heroic  age. 
They  are  our  heroes  and  as  such  they  were 
just  the  sort  to  make  myths  for  us — were  those 
fathers  and  founders.  The  heroes  of  antiquity 
always  did  that  way,  leaving  funny  stories, 
not  over  cleanly,  some  of  them,  about  their 
deeds  and  adventures,  which  passed  for  won- 
ders,  until   long,  long    afterwards,   they   were 


46  The  Centennial 

explained  as  myths  by  the  philosophic  historian, 
showing  that  the  actors  were  really  embodi- 
ments of  natural  laws,  forces,  ideas,  "  physical 
and  ethnical  relations,"  and  such  like.  What 
then  was  the  biggest  myth  for  our  fathers? 
Why,  it  was  all  in  the  word  "Adoption." 
They  believed  in  adoption  just  as  the  early 
Romans  believed  in  the  she-wolf's  suckling  the 
Latin  twins  by  Tiber's  yellow  waves.  Each 
hero  had  his  little  legend.  George  Washing- 
ton,— there  were  stories  about  him.  But  the 
revolution  he  was  engaged  in  when  he  drew 
his  sword  as  commander  under  the  tree  in  Cam- 
bridge was  not,  as  we  used  to  think,  the  first, 
last  and  only  revolution  he  was  up  to  in  his 
career.  The  second,  we  now  have  learned, 
was  consummated  when  George  Guelf,  of  a 
Hanoverian  family,  settled  in  England,  with 
the  connivance  of,  or  being  specially  incited 
thereto  by  J.  Adams,  B.  Franklin,  J.  Jay  and 
H.  Laurens,  American  commissioners  and 
friends  of  our  George  and  sent  by  that  very 
same  Sovereign  Continental  Congress ;  and 
also  moved  thereto  by  himself,  too,  undoubt- 
edly, when  he  interviewed  Cornwallis  at  York- 
town,   interfered   with    our  affairs   and   in   the 


of  a  Revolution.  47 

treaties  of  Paris  1782  and  1783  assumed  to 
recognize  thirteen  somethings,  by  name,  New 
Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  and  so  on,  as  Free 
and  Independent  States ;  and  said  that  he, 
George  aforesaid,  as  King  of  England,  would 
in  the  future  "  deal  with  them  as  such."  A 
third  revolution  was  this  of  1787 — revolution 
by  adoption.  Mr.  Schouler,  another  literary 
man,  in  his  popular  history  of  the  United 
States,  says — "  Nothing  saved  America  from 
perdition  under  the  so-called  perpetual  league 
but  a  coup  de  main.  Happily  the  revolution 
which  superseded  the  old  articles  had  the 
popular  sanction  and  was  bloodless."  As  the 
term  coup  de  main  indicates  force,  the  strong 
hand,  violence,  we  must  suppose  the  author 
may  have  intended  coup  d'etat.  Our  George 
may,  as  a  boy,  have  suffered  under  a  disability 
to  tell  a  lie.  But  as  he  was  foremost  in  the 
convention  and  to  be  so  in  the  new  dynastic 
arrangement,  we  must  believe  he  had  sur- 
mounted that  early  difficulty  in  the  path  of 
political  ambition.  The  adoption  by  the  con- 
vention was  clearly  a  plebiscite,  like  those  engi- 
neered by  the  first  and  third  Napoleon. 

In  older  times   those  who  did   not   like  the 


48  The  Centennial 

political  constitution  of  a  country  and  who 
wished  to  have  the  supreme  power  in  an- 
other hand  than  that  of  the  actual  pos- 
sessor, had  only  one  method  of  being  satisfied. 
They  were  obliged  to  effect  the  desired 
change  by  revolution,  in  their  own  day  and 
generation.  That  such  revolution  always  in- 
volved some  hazard — risk  of  property  and  per- 
haps of  life,  risk  of  getting  the  ugly  name  of 
"traitor" — was  always  taken  into  considera- 
tion beforehand.  Now  if  similarly  dissatisfied 
persons  can  succeed  in  making  the  past  over 
again,  by  pure  literature,  if  they  can,  by  writ- 
ing history  backwards,  on  scientific  principles, 
cause  the  required  revolution  to  have  taken 
place  before  they  were  born  in  time  to  risk  a 
single  hair, — why,  this  way  is  cheaper  by  a 
good  deal,  and,  with  careful  handling,  their 
revolution  may  do  good  service  for  a  long 
time. 

"  The  fathers  and  founders,"  as  we  used  to 
call  them,  Washington,  Bowdoin,  Hamilton, 
Ben  Franklin  and  the  rest,  who  were  sent  as 
delegates  by  those  simple-minded  usurpers — 
those  States,  were,  we  now  see,  somewhat  sly 
fellows.     They  had  beguiled  their  States  into 


of  a  Revolution.  49 

sending  them  to  a  convention  to  draw  up  a 
plan  for  a  better  instrument  for  general  gov- 
ernment, and  behold,  in  following  this  instruc- 
tion, they  accomplished  a  revolution  against 
their  principals.  They  settled  the  matter  for 
their  States,  if  their  "adoption,"  17th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1787, — their  agreement  on  apian — was 
the  adoption,  which  was  the  revolution.  And 
that  it  was,  we  have  admitted  by  choosing  the 
17th  of  September,  1887,  as  marking  the  cen- 
tennial of  the  great  event.  The  so-called 
ratification  by  the  States,  by  conventions  or 
legislatures,  was  a  formality  :  very  proper  as  a 
token  of  State  submission  to  the  inevitable  or 
that  the  revolution  was  "  peaceable,"  as  our 
later  historians  of  the  event  term  it.  Mr.  J. 
Q.  Adams  appears  to  have  had  a  somewhat 
different  opinion  of  the  point  of  time  from 
which  "  adoption  "  should  be  reckoned  ;  if  not 
also  as  to  the  territorial  extent  of  the  change. 
In  the  same  address,  he  says — 

"A  constitution  for  the  people  and  the  dis- 
tribution of  legislative,  executive  and  judicial 
powers  was  prepared.  It  announced  itself  as 
the  work  of  the  people  themselves,  and  as  this 
was  unquestionably  a  power  assumed  by  the 
4 


50  The   Centennial 

convention,  not  delegated  to  them  by  the 
people,  they  religiously  confined  it  to  a  simple 
power  to  propose,  and  carefully  provided  that 
it  should  be  no  more  than  a  proposal,  until 
sanctioned  by  the  confederation  Congress,  by 
the  State  legislatures  and  by  the  people  of  the 
several  States  in  conventions,  specially  assem- 
bled by  authority  of  their  legislatures  for  the 
single  purpose  of  examining  and  passing  upon 
it." 

When  Adams,  in  the  same  address,  refers 
to  the  two  States,  Rhode  Island  and  North 
Carolina,  which  did  not  join  in  ratifying  the 
constitution  until  after  the  government  had 
been  inaugurated  on  the  adoption  by  eleven 
States,  he  represents  them  as  not  bound  by 
such  adoption  and  as  independent  of  that  gov- 
ernment ;  if  not  as  foreign  nations.  In  this  he 
surrenders  the  assumption  which  is  the  basis  of 
his  doctrine  of  State  usurpation,  as  it  is  of  the 
statement  made  in  the  Political  Science 
Quarterly ;  which  is — that  there  was  already 
in  existence  a  single  political  people  or  Nation, 
which  had  come  into  being  in  1776,  and  which 
included  the  population  of  every  one  of  the 
thirteen.     To  suppose  that  it  was  the  revolu- 


of  a  Revolution.  5 1 

tionary  action  of  this  People  which  was  exhibi- 
ted in  the  adoption  of  the  constitution  requires 
the  conclusion  that  each  State  of  the  thirteen 
was  equally  bound  by  it  ;  whenever  it  became 
binding  on  any.  Even  temporary  exclusion  of 
the  two  States  would  argue  that  the  existence 
of  this  revolutionizing  People  was  the  result 
and  not  the  cause  of  State  adoption. 

Our  Quarterly  is  more  consistent,  in  assum- 
ing that  the  convention,  as  well  as  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  represented  in  the  fullest  ex- 
tent the  power  of  an  existing  nation,  which  in- 
cluded the  population  of  each  of  the  thirteen  ; 
while  State  adoption  was  engineered  by  the 
disingenuous  patriotism  of  a  few  revolutionists. 

To  suppose  that  the  People,  to  whose  will 
adoption  is  to  be  ascribed,  was  at  any  time 
found  in  eleven  adopting  States,  only ;  to  be 
increased  by  the  people  of  two  others  only 
when  they,  either  as  States,  or  as  independent 
masses  of  natural  persons,  should  join  in  ratifi- 
cation, is  to  surrender  the  whole  position. 
The  only  consistent  position  must  be  that,  at 
the  moment  when  the  constitution  and  gov- 
ernment began  to  exist  by  the  will  of  the  por- 
tion of   the   nation   occupying  eleven  States 


52  The  Centennial 

each  and  every  State  of  the  thirteen  was  sub- 
ject to  it. 

In  a  later  article  connected  with  this  sub- 
ject,* our  Quarterly  says  with  regard  to  the  pro- 
vision • — "  The  ratification  of  the  conventions 
of  nine  States  shall  be  sufficient  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  this  constitution  between  the 
States  so  ratifying  the  same," — and  to  the  way 
the  convention  introduced  it  to  the  then  sub- 
sisting Congress: — 

"  It  was  certainly  a  shrewd  move  ;  and  the 
proposed  method  of  action  undoubtedly  corre- 
sponded much  more  nearly  to  the  natural  con- 
ditions and  relations  of  our  political  society 
than  did  the  provision  of  the  confederate  [old 
confederation]  constitution,  applicable  to  the 
case ;  but  from  a  strictly  legal  stand-point  it 
was  a  revolutionary  proposition  on  the  part  of 
the  convention,  and  the  reception  and  approval 
of  this  proposition  by  the  people  was  a  revolu- 
tionary act  on  their  part.  As  tersely  as  I  can 
express  it,  what  happened  was  this  :  The  nat- 
ural leaders  in  the  nation  invoked  a  force  un- 


*  P.  S.  Q.  I.,  p.  619 :   Article  by  the  same  writer,  on  Von 
Hoist's  Public  Law. 


of  a  Revolution.  53 

known  to  the  constitution  to  assert  itself  as 
the  sovereign  power,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
declare  the  form  of  organization  under  which 
it  would  act  and  the  majority  sufficient  to  give 
validity  to  the  act,  and  the  regularly  consti- 
tuted powers  felt  compelled  to  stand  aside  and 
see  this  new  self-constituted  sovereignty  oc- 
cupy the  ground.  They  [the  natural  leaders?] 
actually  put  the  new  system  into  operation 
while  two  of  the  States  were  still  holding  out 
against  its  adoption,  and  assumed  such  an  atti- 
tude towards  these  as  to  make  them  quickly 
feel  that  further  resistance  would  be  disastrous." 
Whether  the  actors  in  this  revolution — "  the 
natural  leaders  " — allowed  the  States,  as  such, 
or  the  people  as  a  Nation,  to  take  this  view  of 
the  situation  is  immaterial,  when  we  once  ad- 
mit that  ''subterfuge  "  was  their  proper  instru- 
ment. .As  for  "the  more  politic  Hamilton," 
his  resources  in  this  line  were  equal  to  this 
emergency;  for,  in  the  Federalist,  No.  81,  he 
argued,  as  Madison  and  Marshall  did  also  in 
the  Virginian  Convention,  that  a  State  would 
not  be  suable  by  its  own  citizens  in  the  Federal 
Court — being  sovereign  :  that  difficulty  which 
lias  been  the   great    stumbling  block    for  the 


54  The  Centennial 

supreme-government  theory,  from  the  day  of 
Chisholm  vs.  Georgia  to  the  day  of  Mr.  Justice 
Miller's  reference  to  it  in  his  address  before 
the  Michigan  Law  School,  June,  1887. 

From  the  history  of  this  revolutionary  adop- 
tion, as  given  by  its  discoverers,  one  might 
doubt  whether  anybody  at  that  time,  unless, 
perhaps,  the  gentlemen  who  formed  the  con- 
vention and  sat  it  out  to  the  17th  of  Septem- 
ber, had  any  purpose  or  intention  in  the  matter. 
Fifty  or  sixty  years  ago,  when  Kent  and  Story 
were  living,  the  judges  and  commentators, 
when  in  doubt  about  the  interpretation  of  the 
text,  would  hunt  up  the  record  of  some  of  the 
members  of  the  convention  and  argue  from 
their  sayings  or  doings  that  this  or  that  mean- 
ing was  the  meaning  which  the  framers  them- 
selves intended  the  wording  in  the  Constitution 
should  have.  This  method  of  interpretation 
was,  even  then,  more  or  less  criticised.  But 
now-a-days  we  have  changed  all  that.  We  do 
not  any  more  concern  ourselves  as  to  what 
these  agents  of  revolution  meant  by  the  con- 
stitution they  drafted,  because,  even  if  we  at- 
tribute the  revolution  to  them  individually,  we 


of  a  Revolution.  55 

should  do  it  with  the  suspicion  that  they  didn't 
themselves  know  what  they  were  about. 

So  a  professor  from  another  college  f  has 
just  told  us  : — 

"We  must  also  be  on  our  guard  against  at- 
taching too  much  importance  to  the  way  in 
which  the  framers  of  the  constitution  under- 
stood their  own  action  and  to  the  motives  by 
which  they  explained  it.  This  is  only  another 
way  of  saying  that  the  intellect  often  lags  be- 
hind the  impulses  and  feelings  that  govern 
conduct,  that  men  are  not  seldom  influenced 
by  motives  of  which  they  have  not  given  them- 
selves an  account,  and  that  a  man  may  even 
become  the  champion  of  a  cause  the  nature 
and  bearings  of  which  he  has  not  clearly  dis- 
cerned." 

This,  with  many  similar  propositions  of  this 
school  of  thinkers,  illustrates  the  observation 
of  a  contemporary  French  writer,  Paul  Bour- 
get,  that  democracy  is  antagonistic  to  indi- 
vidual responsibility  and  effort  in  political  life. 


t  Professor  Richard  Hudson,  University  of  Michigan,  in  the 
article,  State  Autonomy  vs.  State  Sovereignty,  in  the  New 
Bnglander  and  Yale  Review,  p.  42,  Jan.,  1S88. 


56  The  Centennial 

It  introduces  "  determinism  "  in  politics.  Men 
individually  regard  no  one  as  particularly  re- 
sponsible and  look  on  all  that  is  done  as  the 
result  of  fatality  ;  or  they  refer  it  to  ideas. 

It  is  perhaps  rather  singular  that  an  earlier 
revolution  which  so  conveniently  disposes  of 
the  charge  that  the  North,  during  the  civil 
war,  was  engaged  in  a  revolutionary  course, 
should  so  recently  have  been  discovered  as 
coinciding  with  the  first  year  of  the  century 
ending  in  1887.  Undoubtedly,  many  would 
like  to  accept  the  state  of  things  presented  to 
us,  as  resulting  from  revolution,  without  being 
obliged  to  infer  that  the  Fathers  and  Founders 
were  either  disguised  tricksters,  or  clumsy 
puppets  moved  by  unseen  forces.  For  their 
satisfaction  we  may  try  to  settle  the  nature  of 
that  which  we  have  called,  as  our  fathers  had 
in  1776,  the  Independence  of  the  United 
States. 

We,  in  our  generation,  are  not  so  far  re- 
moved from  that  date  as  not  to  know  that,  at 
that  time  and  earlier  and  ever  since,  there 
have  been  in  this  country  two  political  schools, 
neither  one  of  them  favored  in  one  section 
more  than  in  another,  and  neither  peculiar  to 


of  a  Revolution.  5  7 

our  country :  because  the  partisans  of  each  have 
been  seen  everywhere  in  Europe  during  the 
same  period.  For  convenience,  and  in  corre- 
spondence rather  with  their  later  acceptance 
than  with  their  origin,  we  may  distinguish 
them  as  the  English  and  the  French  schools. 
The  first,  as  illustrated  by  all  writers  on  Eng- 
lish Constitutional  Law,  rested  on  history,  on 
the  recognition  of  facts  known  by  history. 
The  second  proposed  to  found  all  knowledge 
of  political  fact  on  a  statement  unsupported 
by  history  and  received  as  matter  of  faith, 
maintained  by  dogmatic  assertion.  In  France 
this  was  illustrated  by  each  of  the  two  great 
political  parties  in  deadly  opposition.  By  one, 
in  asserting  an  inborn  right,  in  members  of 
certain  families,  to  hold  the  supreme  power. 
This  they  called  the  doctrine  of  "  legitimacy,  " 
or  of  "  divine  right."  But  it  was  equally  illus- 
trated by  their  opponents  in  proclaiming  that 
the  people,  or  nation,  without  limitation  of 
persons,  are  the  sole  possessors  of  this  power. 
If  this  party  did  not  use  the  terms  divine  right 
and  legitimacy  for  their  own  doctrine,  it  was 
not  because  they  were  not  equally  applicable 
for   it   as    for   the    doctrine    of    the    opposing 


58  The  Centennial 

party.  A  recent  French  author  remarks  :  "  It 
has  been  said  with  reason  that  there  are  the 
Ultramontanes  of  the  rights  of  the  people  and 
the  Jacobins  of  divine  right.  I  do  not  see 
much  difference  between  those  who  invoke 
the  inalienable  and  imprescriptible  right  of 
popular  sovereignty,  in  support  of  universal 
suffrage,  and  those  who  assert  the  inalienable 
and  divine  right  of  a  family  or  chief,  in  sup- 
port of  absolutism."* 

Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  his  last  workf  ob- 
served : — 

"The  enthusiasts  for  popular  government, 
particularly  where  it  reposes  on  a  wide  basis 
of  suffrage,  are  actuated  by  much  the  same 
spirit  as  the  zealots  of  Legitimism.  They  as- 
sume their  principle  to  have  a  sanction  ante- 
cedent to  fact." 

Each  of  these  dogmatic  contestants  equally 
disregarded  facts.  As  to  the  basis  of  their 
respective  doctrines,  they  differed  only  as  one 
had  originated  in  the  theological  period  and 
the  other  in  the  metaphysical  period  of  politi- 

*  Adolphe  Prins,  Professor  in  the  University  of  Brussels, 
in  La  Democratie  et  la  Regime  Parlementaire. 
t  "Essay  on  Popular  Government."  p.  20. 


of  a  Revolution.  59 

cal  speculation  ;  recognized  as  successive  by 
M.  Auguste  Comte,  into  whose  third,  which  is 
presumptively  the  final  period,  that  of  the 
" Positivists"  enlightened  by  the  positive  polit- 
ical science,  we  are  now  to  be  inducted  by 
philosophers  who  can  discern  usurpations  and 
revolutions  in  past  centuries  by  their  innate 
appreciation  of  the  necessity  of  things  neces- 
sary, of  physical  and  ethnical  relations,  forces, 
ideas,  etc.,  a  philosophy  of  determinism,  in 
which  the  will  of  each  and  every  individual 
person  comprehended  in  their  nation  or  people 
is  passive.  But  what  this  will  require  of  us 
individually,  as  subjects,  we  shall  always  learn 
from  these  Comtists,  or  positive  philosophers. 
Personal  sovereignty  may  become  obsolete; 
but  this  political  science  will  answer  its  pur- 
pose. 

Our  statesmen  and  particularly  our  lawyers 
when  acting  as  statesmen,  and  these  have  for 
the  most  part,  been  lawyers,  have  never  been 
distinctly  of  either  the  English  historical  or 
the  French  dogmatic  school ;  and  so  have 
appeared  as  of  one  or  of  the  other,  as  seemed 
convenient  for  the  occasion.  This  is  notably 
true  of  Story  and  of  Webster — the  Dioscuri  of 


6o  The  Centennial 

Northern  Political  Theory.  In  some  instances, 
accepting  what  they  supposed  to  be  the  histor- 
ical fact — the  separate  sovereignty  of  each  of 
the  original  thirteen  States,  they  represented 
the  constitution  as  the  result  of  a  contract  be- 
tween those  States  to  maintain  a  federal  organ 
of  government.  In  others,  in  harmony  with 
the  dogmatic  metaphysical  school,  they  as- 
cribed it  to  the  people  or  nation  acting  as 
superior  and  sovereign,  by  divine  right,  as  to 
the  States. 

But,  for  the  most  part,  they  have  not,  in 
these  last  instances,  thought  of  placing  the 
Nation's  birth  at  1787,  or,  in  the  former,  of 
ascribing  the  existence  of  the  States,  before 
that  date,  to  usurpation  at  some  date  after 
1776,  and  the  national  supremacy,  after  the 
adoption,  to  the  revolutionary  character  of  that 
event.  If  they  rested  on  the  sovereignty  of 
the  people,  they  asserted  it  as  visible  without 
interruption  from  1776;  or,  if  they  asserted 
the  original  sovereignty  of  each  of  the  thirteen 
States,  they  regarded  it  as  commencing  at  the 
same  point  of  time. 

It  has,  however,  been  very  common  with  the 
older  champions  of  supremacy  in  the  Federal 


of  a  Revolution,  6 1 

Government,  as  founded  on  popular  sover- 
eignty, to  combine  dogma  and  history  in 
some  fashion  like  the  following  formula : 

Whereas,  I,  N.  N.,  do  hold,  as  matter  of 
faith  and  dogma,  that  no  government  can  ex- 
ist which  may  not  be  attributed  to  the  known 
will  of  the  people  or  nation,  as  Rousseau  and 
the  French  school  understand  it,  or  as  John 
Locke  had  taught  it  before,  and  yet  have  ac- 
cepted a  commission  as  (Mr.  Justice,  Senator, 
or  other  officer,  N.  N.)  under  a  constitution  of 
government  which  I  know  had  the  force  of 
law  only  after  it  had  been  ratified  in  eleven 
States  by  conventions  chosen  by  majorities  of 
the  State  electors  ;  I,  as  scholar,  commentator, 
or  jurist,  commit  myself  to  saying  that,  in 
this  action  of  the  several  majorities  of  persons 
voting  under  the  particular  laws  of  the  several 
States,  I  recognize  only  the  action  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  whole  country  or  the  nation,  as 
superior  to  each  and  every  State  ;  being  herein 
influenced,  as  patriotic  citizen,  by  the  appre- 
hension that  it  is  only  by  such  doctrine  that 
the  right  of  State  secession  can  be  denied,  or 
various  public  measures,  which  I  think  desira- 
ble, can  be  engineered. 


62  The  Centennial 

This  sort  of  confession  of  faith  has  been 
often  employed,  and  has  done  very  good  service 
for  more  than  half  a  century. 

But  any  statement,  as  of  a  fact,  which  is 
possible  in  the  nature  of  things,  is  better  than 
a  sophism,  which  is  against  the  nature  of  logic. 

What  a  blessed  thing  it  would  have  been  for 
old  Story  if  he  could  have  recognized  J.  Q. 
Adams'  revolution-discovery  in  his  own  time, 
and  anticipated  its  development  by  the  later 
schools  of  political  science  ! 

Whatever  the  original  country  of  the  sover- 
eign people  doctrine  may  be,  there  is  at  least 
one  Frenchman  who  denies  its  visibility  in  the 
history  of  our  adopted  constitution.  M.  E. 
Boutmy,  the  founder  and  director  of  the  exist- 
ing Ecole  libre  des  Sciences  Politiqucs  in  Paris, 
in  a  recent  work,  1885,  on  "  The  Constitutional 
Laws  of  France,  England,  and  the  United 
States,"  has  said  of  our  constitution:  "  This 
is  the  main  fact.  Here,  the  American  people 
is  the  artificial  element,  and,  so  to  speak, 
created  by  a  higher  power.  It  is  so  far  from 
making  the  Federal  Constitution  that  it  results 
from  it.  The  effectual  constituting  power  is 
exercised  by  the  several  States,  the  only  power 


of  a  Revolution.  63 

then  in  existence.  It  is  these  States  which 
are  met  in  every  line  of  the  text,  laboring  to 
take  back  in  detail  what  they  had  granted  in 
gross  to  the  national  element." 

Such  criticism  is  the  more  remarkable  as 
coming  from  a  country  where  the  dogma  of  a 
sovereign  people  has,  for  the  greater  part  of 
the  last  hundred  years,  at  intervals,  stood  for 
the  political  constitution  ;  and  most  French- 
men assume  that  the  American  revolution  of 
1776,  and  the  French  revolutions  since  1791 
are  equally  founded  on  that  basis.  To  their 
minds  our  sovereign  people  have  been  equally 
visible  in  the  Continental  Congress,  in  that  of 
the  Confederation,  and  in  the  adoption  of 
1787.  This  being  the  doctrine  now  resulting 
from  the  discovered  revolution  of  that  last 
date,  we  may  listen  to  another  French  friend 
whose  treatise  Lcs  Etats  Unis pendant  la  Guerre, 
founded,  he  says,  on  personal  observation  and 
acquaintance  with  our  leading  men,  has  been 
well  received  by  the  French  public  ;  thus  see- 
ing ourselves  in  a  good  French  mirror. 

Each  State,  says  M.  Laugel,  "  in  fact  repre- 
sents in  the  American  republic  only  an  admin- 
istrative subdivision.     It  is  just  what  a  depart- 


64  The  Centennial 

ment  in  France  might  be,  if  only  the  prefects 
were  changed  into  governors  named  by  the  in- 
habitants, the  general  councils  into  deliberat- 
ing chambers  for  legislating  on  departmental 
concerns.  It  may  be  truly  said  that,  as  to  ad- 
ministration, the  State  is  everything ;  that,  po- 
litically, it  is  nothing." 

The  instructors  among  ourselves,  to  whom 
we  have  been  listening,  might  say  that  this 
statement  corresponded  at  least  to  the  republic 
of  their  anticipations. 

In  the  brief  record  since  the  day  when  thir- 
teen English  colonies  first  presented  themselves 
before  the  world  as  constituting  a  single  na- 
tional power,  there  are  two  great  events,  which, 
as  American  Legitimists,  we  shall  always  be 
called  to  reconcile  with  our  divine  right  of 
popular  sovereignty. 

The  earliest  of  these  was  when — just  after 
this  same  adoption  of  September,  1787 — the 
plan  agreed  on  in  the  convention  of  framers, 
for  governing  the  entire  population  in  many 
relations  of  common  interest  for  every  na- 
tion, was  candidly  submitted  to  each  one  of 
thirteen  political  bodies  then  recognized  by 
the  world  as  holding  together — in  a  voluntary 


of  a  Revolution.  65 

union  and  not  severally — all  the  powers  ever  be- 
longing to  any  independent  nation:  a  plan 
framed  for  them,  though  without  precise  in- 
structions from  them  as  to  its  general  nature, 
by  good  men  and  true  ;  selected  by  themselves, 
separately,  and  afterwards  presented  to  them, 
severally,  to  accept  or  reject  as  members  of 
that  pre-existing  union — in  and  by  which  and 
only  so — each  of  them  had  had  any  interna- 
tional recognition  or  any  capacity,  as  a  politi- 
cal personality,  to  accept  or  decline  any  such 
plan,  and  when,  through  the  majority  voice  of 
the  qualified  electors,  represented  in  special 
conventions  chosen  by  such  electors,  in  a  cer- 
tain number  of  such  political  bodies,  capable 
in  union  of  sustaining  such  plan  by  force,  this 
plan  was  accepted  and,  for  that  reason,  or  on 
that  basis  as  authority,  was  put  in  operation  as 
the  supreme  law  for  all  the  people  of  the  thir- 
teen States  of  that  pre-existing  union. 

This  action,  or  fact  cognizable  in  history  as 
a  political  event,  culminated  in  the  inaugura- 
tion in  the  city  of  New  York,  April  30,  1789,  of 
the  first  President  of  the  United  States,  which 
was  commemorated  in  that  city  fifty  years 
afterwards,  when  the  address  by  Mr.  Adams, 
5 


66  The  Centennial 

entitled  The  Jubilee  of  the  Constitution  was 
delivered  before  the  New  York  Historical 
Society. 

When  shall  such  hero  live  again  ?  And,  if 
such  is  around  now,  will  our  Historical  Society 
present  him  for  its  celebration  of  the  second 
Jubilee  ? 

The  later  event  was  when,  in  1861— 5,  certain 
political  bodies,  identical  in  nature  with  those 
earlier  thirteen,  and  remaining  in  their  original 
voluntary  union,  with  the  intention  of  sustain- 
ing by  force  that  same  plan  of  government, — 
an  intention  shown  by  the  action  of  majorities 
of  their  qualified  electors  in  continuing  to 
elect  Presidents,  Senators,  and  Congressmen  to 
constitute  an  organ  of  national  government, 
and  in  raising  armies  at  their  call,  did — as 
such  political  bodies  in  union,  and  not  other- 
wise ;  not  as  a  mere  mass  of  population  or  as 
"  the  men  of  1881-5,"  or  as  a  crowd  prompted 
by  their  own  private  notions  of  right  and 
wrong — enable  the  persons  so  elected  to  main- 
tain and  continue  that  plan  of  government 
over  territory  and  population,  that  had  been 
under  eleven  similar  political  bodies  which  had 
rejected  their  former  participation  with   such 


of  a  Revolution.  67 

others  in  sustaining  the  position  of  a  sovereign 
political  entity  or  nation. 

In  each  of  these  critical  periods  a  govern- 
ment was,  to  all  appearance,  voluntarily  sup- 
ported by  certain  pre-existing  States  ;  that  is, 
supported  in  a  different  sense  of  the  word  from 
that  in  which  it  is  said  of  the  action  of  persons 
who,  as  subjects,  support  a  governing  person 
as  matter  of  loyalty  or  duty.  For,  except  as 
these  States  were  there,  giving  the  elective 
franchise  to  their  respective  voting  citizens, 
neither  President  nor  Congress  would  have 
existed,  to  constitute  such  government. 

The  older  event  our  professors  of  Political 
Science  explain  as  a  revolution,  by  unconscious 
revolutionists,  against  themselves — those  thir- 
teen political  personalities  whose  intelligent 
action  in  the  matter  had  formerly  been 
assumed  by  the  unscientific  historians. 

The  more  recent  event  must  now,  and  quite 
as  easily,  be  explained  as  a  continuation  of  the 
same  revolution  ;  in  which  all  those  "relics  of 
usurpation,"  the  States — each  and  every  so- 
called  "  State  "  were  again  the  victims.  There 
are  many  doubtless  who  would  like  to  ascribe 
this,  as  well  as  the  earlier  event,  to  a  popular 


6&  The  Centennial 

demonstration,  the  self-assertion  of  the  sov- 
ereign many,  "  the  Uprising  of  a  Great  People  " 
as  an  enthusiastic  French  friend  has  called  it. 
In  each  instance  they  would  attribute  a  politi- 
cal result  to  the  wills  of  some  bundle  of  units 
of  human  beings  living  in  the  country  at  these 
two  periods,  without  even  stating  that  they 
have  knowledge  of  a  majority  or  minority  of 
such  units  then  living  and  favoring  either  one 
of  these  two  events,  or  how  such  a  majority  or 
minority  could  have  a  political  right  to  bind 
the  others,  not  included  in  such  majority  or 
minority. 

But  it  is  far  neater  work  to  get  our  revolu- 
tionary basis  well  established  on  the  credit,  or 
discredit,  of  a  few  fathers  and  founders  three 
quarters  of  a  century  before  the  last  event. 
Others,  who  have  not  this  clear  view  of  our 
early  history,  are  obliged  to  ascribe  to  "the 
men  of  a  generation  now  passing  away,"  to 
"  the  men  who  revised  the  constitution  in 
1863-5,"  who  gave  it  its  "  final  sanction,"  that 
sort  of  patriotic  chicanery  which  the  Political 
Science  Quarterly  tells  us  was  used  by  the 
framers'  in  1787.  The  eminent  newspaper 
whose  explanation  of  the   later  event  we   have 


of  a  Revolution.  69 

listened  to,  does  not,  in  terms,  ascribe  to  "  the 
men  of  1863-5  "  the  identical  political  thauma- 
turgy  which  is  to  excite  our  admiration  in  the 
case  of  Hamilton  and  his  contemporaries; 
but,  by  saying  that  they  "  turned  the  answer 
of  the  people  to  its  proper  account,"  it  leaves 
room  only  for  a  similar  conclusion.  For  it  is 
no  more  possible  in  the  later  event  than  it  is 
in  the  earlier,  to  find  the  action  or  answer  of 
the  people,  without  finding  it  in  the  action  or 
answer  of  certain  of  the  States. 

If  there  was  any  revolution  when  the  con- 
stitution of  1787  became  the  law  of  the  land, 
it  was  not  the  act  of  any  aggregation  of  peo- 
ple or  of  a  nation  as  such.  It  took  place  at 
the  moment  when  eleven  States  assumed  that, 
as  matter  of  political  fact,  above  all  law,  an 
administration,  as  provided  for  in  that  instru- 
ment which  they  as  States  had  ratified,  would 
by  their  authority,  as  so  many  States  forming 
in  Union  a  political  sovereign  unit,  exercise 
the  specified  powers  in  the  whole  territory  of 
the  thirteen  States,  whether  the  remaining 
two  should  or  should  not,  after  reasonable 
time  for  consideration,  by  joining  in  the  rati- 
fication, continue  with  them  in  the  possession 


JO  The  Centennial 

of  the  unitary  sovereign  power  ;  as  they  had 
the  political  right  to  do,  by  being  already 
members  of  that  pre-existing  political  unit. 

The  reason,  or  theory,  or  explanation  for 
this  being  in  the  historical  fact  that  sovereign 
power  has  never,  since  the  revolution  or  con- 
quest of  1776,  been  held  by  any  State,  except 
as  one  of  a  number  voluntarily  united,  with 
ability  and  purpose  to  maintain  unitary 
sovereign  power  over  all  territory  internation- 
ally recognized  at  the  time  as  that  of  the 
United  States. 

If  there  was  any  revolution  in  1861-5,  it  was 
not  in  the  action  of  any  aggregation  of  individ- 
uals distinguishable  by  opinions  from  other 
inhabitants,  nor  in  that  of  any  nation  as  a  pop- 
ulation known  geographically  ;  it  must  have 
been  in  the  fact  that  certain  (Northern)  States, 
being  voluntarily  united  in  supporting  their 
federal  government  as  agent  or  instrument, 
assumed  to  do,  as  The  United  States,  consti- 
tuting a  sovereign  unit,  what  the  eleven  States 
in  1787-9,  would  have  had  the  right  and  power 
as  a  political  unit  to  do,  and  did,  thereupon,  in 
the  civil  war  maintain  the  powers  delegated 
to  the    federal   government    under   their   sole 


of  a  Revolution.  7 1 

authority  and  will,  at  that  time  expressed  in 
the  constitution,  over  the  whole  territory  and 
population  of  the  States,  including  that  of 
eleven  (Southern)  States  that  had  relinquished 
the  only  right  of  dominion  which  any  State 
had  ever  possessed  ;  that  is — the  political  right, 
as  members  of  one  political  unit,  to  sustain  in 
Union  a  federal  government  while  exercising 
local  government  ;  which  States,  therefore,  in 
accordance  with  such  pre-existing  investiture 
of  sovereignty,  were  practically  treated  as  Ter- 
ritorial districts  and  became  States  again  by 
re-admission. 

But  in  neither  of  these  events  was  there  any 
revolution.  There  was  no  forcible  shifting  of 
the  possession  of  sovereign  power :  because 
the  possession  of  sovereign  national  power  by 
States  voluntarily  in  union  and  not  otherwise, 
nor  severally,  had  been,  as  political  fact  above 
law,  above  science,  above  reason  for  that  mat- 
ter, the  basis  of  all  national  existence  from  its 
beginning  in  the  revolution  of  1776. 

In  either  event  it  was  not  revolution  but  evo- 
lution ;  the  necessary  development  and  contin- 
uance of  one  pre-existent  national  state,  in 
which  the  entirety  of  any   nation's   sovereign 


7  2  The  Centennial 

power  was,  as  matter  of  fact  known  by  history 
and  not  by  doctrine  or  science,  held  and  exer- 
cised by  a  union  of  "  States,"  individually  dis- 
tinguishable by  mutual  recognition  as  volunta- 
rily sustaining,  by  force,  their  united  possession 
of  this  power  over  all  territory  which  had  at 
any  time  been  held  as  included  in  States  or 
Territory  of  that  Union. 

Hobbes  said,  some  time  ago,  that  when  rea- 
son is  against  a  man,  then  the  man  will  be 
against  reason.  And  it  may  be  said  as  well, 
that  when  facts  are  against  a  man,  then  the 
man  will  be  against  the  facts.  Somebody  has 
said  that  we  cannot  escape  history.  But  the 
positive  philosophy  of  our  college  friends 
shows  us  that  nothing  is  easier. 

Appearances,  we  know,  are  deceitful.  In 
appearance,  each  State — that  is,  certain  elec- 
tors using  their  franchise  to  elect  a  representa- 
tive government,  a  right  held  by  each  voter 
individually  by  a  State  law  resting  on  the  will 
of  other  such  voters  in  the  same  State  as  a  sep- 
arate political  person  or  body — had  held,  and, 
in  appearance,  continued  to  hold  political 
power,  while  in  a  voluntary  union  with  other 
similar    States    and     never    otherwise.     Such 


of  a  Revolution.  *]$ 

States,  being  in  a  voluntary  union  and  never 
otherwise,  have  from  first  to  last,  appeared 
holding  the  power  of  an  independent  nation 
over  a  domain  geographically  distinguished  as 
States  and  Territories  of  such  union,  and,  for 
one  hundred  and  twelve  years,  have  in  conse- 
quence of  this  appearance,  been  recognized  by 
the  rest  of  the  world  as  holding  that  power, 
not  severally,  but  only  as  that  voluntary  union. 

Appearances  are  deceitful.  Hence,  skepti- 
cism is  always  necessary  to  clear  the  ground 
for  a  foundation  for  a  faith  of  some  sort.  The 
first  object  of  any  revolutionary  school  must 
be  not  so  much  "to  inspire  belief "  as  to  excite 
a  more  or  less  modest  skepticism  :  even  if  it 
leads  us  to  question  some  of  those  lectures  on 
our  political  history  with  which  the  Justices  of 
the  Supreme  Court  nave  occasionally  enriched 
their  legal  "  opinions." 

Nobody  undertakes  to  say  whether  the  Jus- 
tices of  the  Supreme  Court,  while  repeatedly 
describing  our  political  system  as  M  an  inde- 
structible union  of  indestructible  and  immuta- 
ble States,"  supposed  or  did  not  suppose  they 
were  recognizing  our  legitimist  doctrine  of 
States  subject  to  a  sovereign  Government,  or 


74  The  Centennial 

to  a  sovereign  People.  But,  by  their  profess- 
ing to  acknowledge  the  eleven  members  of  the 
so-called  Confederacy  as  continuing  States  of 
the  United  States  during  the  Civil  War  and 
the  Reconstruction  era,  their  political  dictum 
seems  to  tally  with  the  theory  of  a  sovereign 
President,  Congress  and  Judiciary,  holding  in- 
dependent power  over  each  and  every  State. 
If  accepted  as  political  fact,  it  lays  a  good 
foundation  for  the  theory.  It  follows  that 
any  State  may  be  treated  in  the  same  style — 
as  a  Territory,  practically — on  the  judgment 
of  the  same  sovereign  Government. 

Our  professors  of  Political  Science  appear 
to  have  understood  the  dictum  of  the  Court  as 
a  re-assertion  of  State  sovereignty,  rather  than 
of  the  opposite  ;  and,  while  urging  a  plea  for 
11  skepticism  in  politics,"  very  logically,  on 
their  own  theories,  flout  this  attempt  to  make 
history  by  judicial  decision,  when  the  position 
of  States  and  the  Government  can  be  explained 
scientifically  by  positive  philosophy.  It  really 
matters  not  what  was  done  in  reference  to 
those  disturbed  districts.  States  they  were 
not,  after  engaging  in  secession  ;  because  they 
had    not     been     States     before     that     time. 


of  a  Revohction.  75 

Whether  there  was  a  State  or  a  people  of  a 
State,  one  hundred  years  ago,  to  have  a  mind 
of  its  own — or  was  not — neither  State  nor  peo- 
ple of  a  State  could  continue  after  that  revo- 
lution of  1787.  "  There  is  really  no  such  thing 
as  the  people  of  a  commonwealth  [State]  in  a 
sound  view  of  our  political  and  social  system  ; 
there  is  only  the  people  of  the  Nation  residing 
within  the  commonwealth.  The  People  is  a 
national  conception  and  preserves  its  integrity 
against  government  only  as  a  Nation."* 

As  now  enlightened,  it  must  seem  to  us  also 
"  that  the  great  vitiating  principle  of  the  most 
of  our  political  and  judicial  reasoning  is  this 
dogma  that  our  political  system  is  an  inde- 
structible union  of  immutable  States ; "  that 
it  "is  an  abstraction  which  has  no  warrant 
either  in  history  or  present  fact  or  tendency," 
and  "  that  the  perpetuity  of  our  Union  [what- 
ever that  may  be  when  there  are  no  States  to 
be  united]  depends  primarily  upon  the  exist- 
ence of  certain  geographical  relations  and  eth- 
nical conditions,  "f 

We   were   much  annoyed,  during  the  civil 

*P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  25.  *  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  12. 


j6  The  Centennial 

war  troubles,  when  some  English  advocate  of 
the  Southern  secession  claims  spoke  of  "  the 
United  States"  as  only  "a  geographical  ex- 
pression," not  indicating  any  real  political  ex- 
istence. But  now  we  can  say  exactly  the 
same  thing  ;  only  with  a  totally  opposite  ap- 
plication. 

Our  folks  should  long  ago  have  been  done 
with  that  word,  the  States,  for,  "  so  thorough- 
going was  the  change  which  the  relation  be- 
tween state  and  Nation  now  suffered  [in  the 
revolution  by  adoption,  1787]  that  we  cannot 
longer  properly  speak  of  our  local  organiza- 
tions as  states,  but  as  commonwealths,  i.e., 
local  governments  containing  under  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  Nation  and  the  supremacy  of 
the  Nation's  general  governmental  representa- 
tive, a  large  element  of  self-government."* 

So  Pomeroy  made  a  point  of  using  common- 
wealth,  for  State. 

But  how  we  shall  be  any  safer  or  make  the 
world  any  wiser  by  saying  "  commonwealth,' 
we  may  not  see,  as  yet,  especially  as  the 
name    has    long    been    used    and    before   the 

*  P.  s.  Q.,  I.,  p.  23/ 


of  a  Revolution.  Jj 

adoption,  by  two  of  the  oldest  and  proudest 
of  the  thirteen ;  but  whether  the  name  be 
jessamine  or  jimson-weed,  the  flower  smells 
sweet  or  stinks,  all  the  same.  Probably,  we 
may  keep  the  name  United  States  as  designat- 
ing "  the  Nation's  general  governmental  rep- 
resentative "  only,  and  parse  it  as  a  noun, 
singular,  as  Professor  Pomeroy  and  others 
have  done. 

"  Putting  together  "  say  our  college  friends, 
in  conclusion  of  an  argument  to  which  no  ad- 
miration of  ours  can  do  justice, f  "  all  these 
principles,  facts,  and  tendencies — physical,  eth- 
nological, historical,  legal,  and  political — how 
can  we  any  longer  declare  the  cardinal  doc- 
trine of  our  system  to  be  '  an  indestructible 
union  of  indestructible  and  immutable 
States  ?  '  Are  we  not  dealing  in  mere  ab- 
stractions when  we  say  so  ?  Are  we  not 
giving  way  to  an  exaggerated  Platonism  in 
our  political  philosophy:  attempting  to  substi- 
tute ideas  for  things,  instead  of  seeking  to 
find  ideas  in  things  ?  " 

Well,  of   course,  we  must  say — Aye  !     Our 

t  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  P.  34. 


7 8  The  Centennial 

instructors  in  Political  Science  evidently  mean 
that  we  shall.  There  are  probably  some  less 
well-tutored  individuals  who  would  think  that 
attempts  of  this  sort  are  illustrated  in  this 
argumentation  quite  as  much  as  in  the  propo- 
sition so  contemptuously  denounced. 

The  existence  of  the  States  must  have  been 
another  myth  from  our  heroic  age  ;  at  least 
after  that  "  usurpation  "  of  theirs  came  to  an 
end  in  the  adoption,  which  was  State  suicide 
all  round.  The  admission  of  new  States  after- 
wards has  been  a  delusion.  Indeed  that  acute 
Anglo-American,  Mr.  Moncure  Conway,  has 
already  catalogued  our  belief  in  the  existence 
of  such  monstrosities  as  one  of  our  various 
"  Republican  Superstitions."  We  now,  as 
true  legitimists,  shall  receive  as  object  of 
loyalty  the  population  of  an  earth-surface, 
without  regard  to  any  particular  method  of 
expressing  authority.  Our  People  of  the 
United  States  continues  its  political  existence 
by  natural  generative  increase;  just  as  any 
multitude  of  human  beings  continues  in  Asia, 
Africa  or  a  Terra  Incognita  by  having  "  physi- 
cal and  ethnical  existence,"  for  to  such  a 
people   our  teachers   attribute   "  governmental 


of  a  Revolution.  79 

existence,"  independently  of  any  or  all  States, 
united  or  disunited,  with  the  will  to  hold  and 
exercise  power,  even  unconsciously,  since  they 
have  discovered  that  this  was  shown  in  the 
revolutionary  adoption  of  1787. 

There  is  as  much  substituting  ideas  for 
things  when  a  political  scientist  evolves  the 
Nation,  having  innate  power,  out  of  his  own 
consciousness,  or  by  his  going  "back  of  the 
constitution  into  the  domains  of  geography 
and  ethnography,  the  womb  of  constitutions 
and  of  revolutions,  to  ask  there  for  the  princi- 
ple of  perpetuity  in  any  political  union,"  as 
there  is  in  the  social  compact,  or  the  glittering 
generalities  of  the  4th  of  July  orator.* 

Yet  we  are  not  to  fancy  that  to  sustain,  in 
the  future,  our  sovereign  Nation  theory  we 
shall  have  to  content  ourselves  with  those 
Rousseau  commonplaces  about  natural  rights 
and  natural  equality  which  served  for  gilding 
and  varnish  in  the  Declaration  of  1776,  and 
which  the  primitive  Justices  of  the  Supreme 
Court — Wilson,  Jay,  Marshall  and  others — 
would    twaddle    about    whenever     they     got 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  13. 


So  The  Centennial 

balled-up  in  their  political  disquisitions  on  the 
authority  of  the  written  constitution.  John 
Quincy  Adams,  in  his  Jubilee  and  various  4th 
of  July  orations,  found  his  sovereign  people  in 
a  supposed  contribution  from  all  the  Toms, 
Dicks  and  Harrys  of  their  individual  nature- 
given  independence;  a  people  made  by  the 
assumed  consent  of  each  inhabitant.  That 
was  well  enough  fifty  years  ago  and  for  fifty 
years  before  that.  It  was  the  philosophy  of 
the  century. 

But  a  philosophy  that  can  discern  a  revolu- 
tion after  the  lapse  of  a  hundred  years  has  no 
need  of  such  a  clumsy  and  antiquated  con- 
trivance. There  was  a  revolution  and  the 
people  did  it.  Therefore  there  is  a  Sovereign 
People. 

Our  Quarterly  says  with  just  discrimina- 
tion:* 

"  Every  student  of  political  and  legal  science 
should  divest  himself,  at  the  outset,  of  this 
pernicious  doctrine  of  natural  rights,  accord- 
ing to  which  each  individual,  or  the  popula- 
tion of  any  section,  is  practically  authorized  to 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  L,  p.  17. 


of  a  Revolution.  81 

determine  in  what  his  or  its  rights  consist. 
Natural  rights  are  at  best  but  the  ethical 
feeling  as  to  what  rights  should  be,  and  the 
more  individual  or  particularistic  that  feeling 
is,  the  less,  as  a  rule,  is  it  to  be  trusted;  while 
the  more  general  it  is,  the  more  it  is  to  be 
relied  upon  ;  "  Good  !  and  here  comes  in  the 
Nation  having  a  consciousness  and  a  will — 
"  and  when  it  originates  in  the  Nation's  con- 
sciousness, it  has  the  moral  persuasiveness 
behind  it  which  influences  the  Nation's  will 
to  transform  it  into  rights.  Until  this  hap- 
pens however,  the  assertion  of  rights  is  but  an 
ignorant  boast  or  a  disloyal  threat." 

Well  said,  indeed  ;  and  now,  in  the  next 
place,  how  is  the  assumed  Nation — our  Na- 
tion— to  manifest  its  consciousness  and  will, 
unless  by  the  pre-existence  of  certain  individ- 
uals holding  what  we  call  supreme  political 
power  over  others?  And  how  are  any  of  us 
to  know  of  such,  as  matter  of  palpable,  tangi- 
ble fact — the  States  having  gone  to  Ballyhack  ? 

Would  you  like  to  know?     Of  course  you 
would.     Well,  then,  did  you  ever  hear  of  the 
Commune  ? 
6 


&2  The  Centennial 

Communism  we  have  all  heai  of,  and  of 
Communists,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  from 
the  days  of  the  twelve  Apostles  to  those  of 
Owen,  Fourier,  Mr.  Henry  George,  Dr.  Mc- 
Glynn,  and  such.  But  their  plans  for  manag- 
ing capital  by  common  participation  in  labor 
and  profit  have  nothing  to  do  with  Commune 
— in  the  sense  of  municipality,  or  city,  ward, 
or  township  of  the  New  England  pattern. 
Community  has  rather  much  variety  of  senses ; 
but  we  may  use  it  as  a  temporary  equivalent 
for  the  word  we  would  have  to  borrow  from 
our  French  examplars. 

States,  that  is  our  "  States,"  as  we  used  to 
say,  "  commonwealths,"  rather,  have  no  exist- 
ence in  the  nature  of  things.  They  have  not 
even  boundaries,  for  the  most  part,  more  than 
surveyors'  lines. 

"  No  one  knows  now,  by  anything  which  na- 
ture has  to  show,  either  in  geography  or 
ethnology,  when  one  crosses  the  line  which 
separates  two  commonwealths  from  each  other. 
The  two  natural  elements  in  our  system  are 
now  the  Community  and  the  Nation.  The 
former  is  the  point  of  real  local  self-govern- 
ment,  the   latter  that  of   general  self-govern- 


of  a  Revolution.  83 

ment;  and  in  the  adjustments  of  the  future 
these  are  the  forces  which  will  carry  with  them 
the  determining  power.  The  commonwealth 
government  is  now  but  a  sort  of  middle  in- 
stance."* 

"  Determining  power  " — consciousness  and 
will — if  these  cannot  be  manifested  by  a 
population  of  individual  human  beings  called 
"  Nation,"  they  may  be  by  the  Communities. 

All  this  is  genuine  French  doctrine,  and  of 
the  latest  mode  de  Paris.  It  is  the  doctrine 
that  in  1870  cowed  the  respectable  bourgeois  of 
Paris  under  a  gang  of  ruffian  citoyens  and  en- 
abled these,  in  the  name  of  La  Commune,  for 
months  to  make  face  against  the  improvised 
government  which  claimed  unlimited  author- 
ity, as  had  all  the  governments  since  1791 — 
Republican,  Monarchical,  Imperial  —  in  the 
name  of  the  divine  right  of  the  French  nation. 

We  remember  how  De  Tocqueville,  who  was 
said  to  have  revealed  the  United  States  to  Eu- 
rope by  his  Democracy  in  America,  thought 
he  had  discovered  in  the  self-governing  town- 
ship  of    the    New    England    States,    the    real 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  33- 


84  The  Centennial 

unitary  possessor  of  ultimate  sovereignty  ;  as 
near  the  French  idea  of  Commune  as  anything 
we  have  on  hand  at  present. 

And  how  are  we,  nous  autres  Americains,  to 
know  where  Nation  begins  and  Commune  end.-, 
or  where  Commune  begins  and  Nation  ends  ? 
Why,  plainly  enough,  by  "  reasons  of  political 
science  and  the  natural  devolution  of  powers." 
And  if  all  who  are  the  sovereign-many  are  not 
up  to  this  sort  of  thing  we,  at  least,  in  our 
commune  have  our  College  and  scientific  fel- 
lows to  our  hand,  who  will  do  even  more  than 
furnish  plans  of  government  and  constitution, 
for  us  to  adopt,  "  when  so  dispoged,"  but  who 
will  tell  us,  ex  cathedra,  what  is  and  what  shall 
be  as  easily  as  they  have  told  us  what  has 
been,  by  a  philosophy  of  determinism,  ex- 
cluding all  personal  choice,  either  of  one  or  of 
millions. 

A  recent  German  writer  on  public  law  has, 
as  we  are  told,  said,  "  Ours  is  a  period  in  which 
abstract  ideas  of  the  state  and  of  man  are  be- 
ginning to  exert  again  the  sway  held  by  them 
in  1789,  1830,  and  1848."  And  the  comment 
made  on  this,  in  a  later  number  of  this  same 
"Political  Science  Quarterly'  is  : 


of  a  Revolution.  85 

"  It  is  well  that,  at  such  a  time,  a  great  pub- 
licist, such  as  Professor  Schultze,  should  chal- 
lenge our  idealism  and  call  us  back  to  history 
and  present  fact.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  de- 
nounce the  theory  of  atomistic  popular  sover- 
eignty as  error,  and  to  present  the  state — the 
political  people  in  organization,  no  matter  how 
small  a  proportion  of  the  population  that 
may  be — as  the  true  and  actual,  and  only 
legitimate  sovereignty."  * 

We  cannot  say  whether  this  critique,  which 
is  by  the  same  writer,  is  given  as  harmonizing 
with  the  Sovereign  Nation  doctrine  of  the  arti- 
cle in  the  first  number.  The  sovereignty 
which  is  not  "  atomistic  popular  sovereignty  " 
must,  if  there  are  no  States  to  hold  it,  be  held 
by  communes. 

Whether  that  which  the  German  calls  error 
be  error  or  not,  it  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
partisans  of  American  legitimacy  who  proclaim 
the  sovereign-many,  and,  instead  of  giving 
history  for  proof,  advance  a  title  by  divine 
right  of  the  people,  under  the  metaphysical 
garnish   of  sovereignty  by  idea.     They  claim 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  502. 


86  The  Centennial 

to  have  presented  historical  "principles,  facts, 
and  tendencies  "  with  others,  all  bunched  to- 
gether as  "  physical,  ethnological,  historical, 
legal  and  political,"  for  basis  of  an  induction  , 
but  it  is  not  any  such  recognition  of  the  his- 
torical succession  of  instances  of  actual  power- 
holding  as  has  hitherto  been  taken  for  the 
basis  of  political  knowledge  by  English  and 
American  publicists.  The  historical  facts  they 
rely  on  are  such  as  the  story  of  physical  dis- 
covery records — facts  in  geology,  climatology, 
anthropology,  ethnology,  cosmology,  psychol- 
ogy and  every  other  'ology.  They  give  such 
facts  as  steamboats,  railroads,  telegraphs,  and 
telephones,  as  establishing  the  matured  devel- 
opment of  a  centralized  political  existence,  no 
matter  where  power  was  located  when  the 
written  constitution  was  made  law,  and  such 
means  of  intercommunication  were  wanting. 
It  is  nothing  to  them  that  State  governments 
have  existed  here,  or  that  governments  such  as 
monarchies,  oligarchies,  and  federal  republics 
have  existed  elsewhere  from  time  immemorial. 
Such  history  is  not  science. 

This  school    of   scientific  politics    presents 
ideas  as  entitled  to  loyal  submission,  no  mat- 


of  a  Revolution.  &j 

ter  whose  ideas  they  may  be  ;  but  with  the 
implication  that  only  those  who  entertain  cer- 
tain ideas  are  to  constitute  the  sovereign  peo- 
ple or  Nation.  They  do  not  say  thoughts,  that 
would  be  giving  away  the  whole  thing,  by 
suggesting  at  once  that  there  must  be  some 
thinkers.  It  might  look  too  cheeky  to  assert 
plumply  that  they  who  so  think  have  a 
monoply  of  thinking. 

But  whether  ideas  floating  in  our  circumam- 
bient atmosphere,  like  bottomless  cherubs,  all 
head  and  wings,  or  thoughts  put  forth  by 
living  beings  like  ourselves,  have  been  success- 
fully at  work  on  our  political  corporeity,  mat- 
ters little.  Nor  does  it  matter  much  whether 
it  has  been  only  since  1861,  or  from  way  back 
in  1787  ;  nor  whether  the  transformation  be 
called  revolutionary — as  resulting  from  some- 
body's will,  or  by  a  determinism  for  which 
nobody  is  responsible  —  wre  are  concerned 
with  the  question  only  as  bearing  directly  on 
the  inquiry  whether  there  is  now  anything 
political  which  has  had  a  continuing  existence 
since  1787. 

When  we  have  come  to  seeing  that  the 
ideas    which   we   are  henceforth  to   accept  as 


88  The  Centennial 

determining  our  political  rights  and  duties,  so 
far  as  we  shall  have  any,  were  the  ideas  ex- 
ploited by  the  working  agents  in  what  was 
called  "  the  Adoption,"  and  that  this  adoption 
was  Revolution,  then  we  begin  to  know  that 
Revolution  has  been  the  continuing  action ; 
that  Revolution  is  the  thing  whose  duration  in 
time  and  space  we  have  to  celebrate : — Revolu- 
tion, which  has  had  its  Anniversaries  and  its 
Jubilee  and  a  Centennial,  and  may  yet  have 
Centennials  or  Jubilees  or  Anniversaries. 

It  is  well  for  us  all,  in  our  time,  not  to  be 
ignorant  of  the  purposes  of  those  "  fathers  and 
founders  "  whose  merit  we  must  recognize  if 
we  celebrate  our  anniversaries  with  any  show 
of  exultation — merit  of  some  kind — though 
perhaps  Hamilton  was  only  a  patriotic  charla- 
tan, and  Washington  could  sing  falsetto  when 
there  was  occasion.  We  may  leave  to  another 
jubilee  or  centennial  the  question  whether 
"the  men  of  1861-5  "  who,  we  a/e  told,  re- 
modelled the  imperfect  mechanism  of  the  men 
of  1787,  were  equally  contemptuous  of  the 
people  whose  sovereign  will  they  professed  to 
execute.  Perhaps  there  have  been  American 
statesmen  who  could  say,  with  some   of  an- 


of  a  Revolution,  89 

tiquity — populus  vult  decipi,  et  dccipiatnr  :  it  is 
the  few  who  do,  and  the  many  who   are  done. 

But  it  concerns  us  and  those  who  shall  come 
after  us  much  more  to  know  the  conditions  of 
political  existence  under  which  we  now  live, 
whether  established  one  hundred  years  ago,  or 
during  the  civil  war;  or,  at  any  time,  through 
discovery  by  political  science.  As  far  as  con- 
cerns this  matter,  the  historical  questions  of 
time  and  ancestral  virtue  are  of  no  importance  ; 
and  if  any  can  show  us  our  real  situation  and 
the  nature  of  that  which  here  answers  to  al- 
legiance and  what  is  now,  for  us  individually, 
loyalty,  he  need  not  trouble  himself  or  us  about 
dates  and  anniversaries.  "  Let  the  dead  past 
bury  its  dead."  Shall  we  not  gladly  hail  any 
such,  and  above  all  any  who,  like  the  teachers 
to  whom  we  have  been  hearkening,  have  the 
courage  of  their  opinions  ?  And,  here  we  may 
recall  a  remark  by  De  Tocqueville  :  * 

"  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  author 
who  wishes  to  be  understood  is  obliged  to 
push  all  his  ideas  to  their  utmost  theoretical 
consequences  and  often  to  the  verge  of  what 

*  De  Tocqueville  :  "Democracy;"   Introduction,  p.   iS. 


90  The  Centennial 

is  false  or  impracticable  ;  for,  if  it  be  necessary 
sometimes  to  depart  from  the  rules  of  logic  in 
action,  such  is  not  the  case  in  discourse,  and  a 
man  finds  it  almost  as  difficult  to  be  inconsist- 
ent in  his  language  as  to  be  consistent  in  his 
conduct." 

What  then  is  now  that  political  personality, 
begun  in  Revolution  one  hundred  years  ago, 
and  improved  in  strength  and  stature  by  con- 
tinuing Revolution  since  1861,  whose  duration 
we  could  celebrate  as  centennial,  though  there 
was  no  hundredth  year  of  a  continuing  adoption 
by  States  continuing  to  exist  after  that  revo- 
lutionary birth? 

The  personal  creature  then  born  and  since 
developed  by  revolutionary  vitality  is  our  Sov- 
ereign Central  Government — not  an  adminis- 
trative government,  or  instrument  under  the 
will  of  an  existing  power-holder,  but  a  gov- 
ernment per  se,  a  government  of  persons,  or  by, 
or  in  persons  ;  as  absolute  in  reality  and  in  all 
possible  manifestation,  by  deeds,  as  any  the 
world  knows  of : — persons  regulating  them- 
selves, in  ordinary  or  quiet  times,  more  or  less  by 
a  pledge,  in  a  form  of  words  called  a  "  constitu- 
tion," and  continuing  their  governmental  exist- 


of  a  Revolution.  91 

ence  as  in  accord  with  that  form  of  words ;  but 
being,  to  themselves,  the  only  reason  for  follow- 
ing that  pledge  and  the  only  judge  of  that  ac- 
cord. There  being  no  other  visible  persons 
consciously  holding  political  power,  those  who 
constitute  this  government  at  any  particular 
moment  hold  all  power  and  are  accountable  to 
none. 

If  the  people,  as  found  in  the  political  cor- 
porations called  the  States,  existing  in  union  as 
one  sovereignty,  as  political  fact  before  any 
written  constitution,  without  dependence  on 
any  but  themselves  as  States  united, — each 
on  all  and  all  on  each,  maintaining  one  sov- 
ereignty as  voluntarily  united, — do  not  hold 
the  ultimate  power  of  a  nation  among  nations, 
there  is  no  people  at  all  to  hold  it;  because,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  no  people,  merely  as  in- 
habitants of  a  portion  of  earth-surface,  ever 
could  consciously  exercise  such  power  or  be 
known  as  a  nation  among  nations.  The  con- 
ception of  a  people  or  nation  discernible  by 
the  metaphysical  humanitarian  as  existing  in 
a  mass  of  human  beings  more  or  less  discrimi- 
nated by  race,  language  or  sympathies  from 
other   masses,  and    located   between   these  or 


92  The  Centennial 

those  lines  of  physical  topography,  like  rivers, 
seas  or  mountains,  which  would  be  convenient 
as  political  frontiers,  may  have  aided  with 
other  motives  in  stimulating  revolutionary 
action  ;  but,  as  a  basis  for  political  recognition, 
it  is  a  fancy  generated  from  the  European  con- 
tests of  the  present  century. 

Our  professors  of  Political  Science  have  told 
us  that  the  commonwealth  government  is  now 
but  "  a  sort  of  middle  instance."  To  know 
what  that  means  we  shall  probably  have  to 
apply  to  the  professor  of  Logic.  Our  Quar- 
terly adds — 

"  Too  large  for  local  government,  too  small 
for  general,  it  is  beginning  to  be  regarded  as 
a  meddlesome  intruder  in  both  spheres — the 
tool  of  the  strongest  interest,  the  oppressor 
of  the  individual.  This  has  been  its  history 
in  other  lands  and  other  times ;  and  the  mere 
fact  that  it  professes  to  be  popular  here,  while 
it  has  been  princely  or  aristocratic  elsewhere, 
will  not  save  it  from  the  same  fate."* 

It  was  John  Austin,  whose  keen  insight 
showed    him,  long   ago,   that,    as   the    several 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  34. 


of  a  Revolution.  93 

States  as  corporate  bodies,  being  united,  as 
political  fact  above  law,  had  always  exercised 
every  jot  of  political  power  there  was  to  exer- 
cise— they,  so  constituting  a  unit,  were  like  an 
oligarchy  in  respect  to  the  people  or  nation  as 
a  mass  of  individuals.  If  the  discovery  is  pro- 
claimed— that  the  continued  existence  of  such 
a  unity  of  such  States  is  hostile  to  the  liberties 
of  the  individual,  the  proof  must  rest  on  the 
idea  that  such  a  unity  is  identical  with  an 
oligarchy  composed  of  single  natural  persons, 
princes  or  nobles ;  or  else  on  the  idea  that 
every  possession  of  sovereign  power  is  incom- 
patible with  individual  liberty,  which  last 
notion,  indeed,  is  identical  with  that  which  is 
axiomatic  in  our  Quarterly — the  assumed  sov- 
ereign people  or  nation — or  the  assumption 
that  there  can  be  no  possession  of  sovereignty 
other  than  one  which  is  imaginary.  An  axio- 
matic proposition  well  suited  to  a  continuous 
revolution. 

Can  it  ever  be  the  case  with  us  that  some 
one  hereafter  will  say,  as  De  Tocqueville  of 
his  own  country — "  I  perceive  that  we  (in 
France)  have  destroyed  those  individual  pow- 
ers which  were  able  single-handed  to  cope  with 


94  The  Centennial 

tyranny,  but  it  is  the  government  that  has  in- 
herited the  privileges  of  which  families,  cor- 
porations and  individuals  have  been  deprived  ; 
to  the  power  of  a  small  number  of  persons, 
which  if  it  was  sometimes  oppressive  was  often 
conservative,  has  succeeded  the  weakness  of 
the  whole  community." 

If  a  number  of  these  States,  or  common- 
wealths— if  anybody  likes  that  better — being, 
as  matter  of  fact,  in  a  voluntary  political  union 
independently  of  any  written  provision  for  a 
General  or  Federal  Government,  as  administra- 
tion, have  not,  at  each  point  of  time,  held  all 
sovereignty  as  a  nation,  whether  displayed  in 
Federal  or  State  Government,  there  has  been 
no  people  or  nation  at  all  to  "  preserve  its  in- 
tegrity against  government,"  because,  except 
as  one  of  a  definite  number  of  persons  holding 
the  elective  franchise  by  the  will  of  the  cor- 
porate State,  no  living  man  has  consciously 
held  recognized  power  as  against  any  govern- 
ment whatever.  We  may  perhaps  assume 
that  power  against  government  such  as  has 
been  claimed  by  the  outlaw,  the  brigand,  the 
communard,  the  petroleuse,  the  Anarchist,  to 
say  nothing  of   the   late  Mr.  John  Brown,  of 


of  a  Revolution.  95 

Ossawottamie,  or  "  his  soul,"  is  not  the  sort 
which  our  ancient,  respectable,  and  very  well 
endowed  college  would,  at  present,  recommend 
as  that  by  which  the  People  or  Nation  shall 
manifest  its  existence. 

This  is  as  true  now  as  it  was  one  hundred 
years  ago,  when  if  there  was  revolution  on  the 
part  of  anybody,  the  people,  by  the  showing 
of  these  teachers,  had  nothing  as  a  nation  to 
do,  consciously,  in  bringing  it  about,  and  the 
government  then  instituted  derives  no  author- 
ity from  them  and  is  as  little  responsible  to 
them  as  the  Russian  Czar  is  to  the  nation  of 
Russians. 

Is  it  nothing  for  us  to  know,  no  matter  how, 
if  we  do  but  know  it,  that  the  government  that 
appeared  to  our  fathers  as  an  administration, 
acting  for  a  known  and  visible  superior,  recog- 
nized by  the  world  as  United  States,  has  really 
been  in  possession  of  all  sovereign  political 
jurisdiction  from  its  first  revolutionary  seizing 
the  reins  of  power,  whenever  it  was,  and  that 
it  is  now  our  self-sufficing  master  and  ruler? 

But  the  constitution  ! — you  say.  But  the 
Supreme  Court ! — you  say.  The  constitution  ? 
As    what?     As   law?     For   whom  is    it    law? 


96  The   Centennial 

For  this  government  ?  for  certain  actual  per- 
sons, being  the  President,  the  Congress,  the 
Judiciary,  for  the  time  being  ?  Is  the  Consti- 
tution law  for  them,  they  being  the  sovereign? 
Sovereign  because  there  is  no  visible,  tangible 
person  in  existence — the  States  being  gone  to 
the  dogs — to  make  it  law,  except  as  that  gov- 
ernment exists.  It  is  not  a  law  on  ox  for  them, 
but  a  law  by  them.  What  is  it  more  than  a 
pledge,  octroye'e  by  that  government,  by  which 
it  proposes  to  continue  its  own  existence, 
being  itself  the  only  judge  of  its  fulfilment  of 
that  pledge  ? 

And  this  Constitution  of  ours :  is  it  really  so 
generated  out  of  the  nature  of  things  as  to  be 
very  nearly  supernatural?  Did  it  cause  its 
own  existence?  self-created?  self-sustained? 
Has  not  a  German,  Professor  von  Hoist,  "  in 
that  invaluable  work  upon  our  constitutional 
history,"  which  starts  out  with  our  French 
dogma  —  legitimacy  of  a  sovereign-people  — 
"  devoted  an  entire  chapter  to  what  he  terms 
1  the  canonizing  of  the  constitution,'  i.e.,  the 
making  of  a  political  bible  out  of  it ;  all  doubts 
as  to  the  absolute  truth  and  perfection  of 
which  "  are   regarded  as  heresy?     "  The  irony 


of  a  Revolution.  97 

of  the  learned  Professor  is  certainly  merited. 
During-  the  first  decades  of  this  century,  the 
never  changing  aspect  of  the  Nation's  leaders, 
mutely  prostrate  in  credulous  worship  before 
the  great  fetish  of  our  Political  System,  is,  to 
say  the  least,  touching."* 

So  say  our  Professors.  Webster!  Daniel! 
Giant  shade  !  forgive  them ! 

This  constitution-business  was  another  of 
those  myths  that  our  fathers  so  delighted  in — 
like  the  Adoption  myth.  Now,  when  the 
adoption  by  thirteen  States  is  an  exploded 
fiction,  why  should  the  nominal  object  of 
adoption  be  any  longer  venerated  ?  What  is 
there  now  of  sacredness  in  its  oracles  ?  Unless 
it  be  left  in  the  few  words  of  the  Preamble — 
"We  the  People  " — so  long  triumphantly  pro- 
claimed as  the  all-sufficient  testimony  to  that 
origin  which  our  scientists  have  now  shown  the 
adoption  to  have  been — revolution  and  nature 
of  things,  now  one  hundred  years  continuing 
— always  represented  by  a  government  origi- 
nally called  "  federal  "  by  worshippers  of  the 
great  constitution-fetish? 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  8. 


98  The  Centennial 

And  the  Supreme  Court  ? — "  In  all  the  ex- 
citements of  bitter  contests,  involving  great 
financial  interests,  power,  position,  and  even 
political  existence,  in  fact  everything  which 
could  properly  be  brought  within  its  judicial 
cognizance,  the  people  have  always  felt  that 
their  interests  were  safely  entrusted  to  its 
charge."*  So  says  Mr.  Justice  Miller,  in  his 
address  to  the  Law-graduates  of  Michigan  Uni- 
versity, and  we  will  all.  say  with  him  in  his 
concluding  sentence — "That  the  court  may 
long  continue  to  deserve  this  confidence,  as  it 
has  for  the  past  hundred  years,  must  be  the 
desire  of  every  patriotic  citizen." 

The  claim  for  the  Court,  to  have  faithfully, 
as  tribunal,  upheld  the  application  of  the  con- 
stitution as  law  for  those  subject  to  law,  may 
be  proudly  sustained.  But  what  will  be  its 
position  as  umpire  when  it  is  itself  identified 
with  a  body  of  persons  holding  the  only  power 
in  the  land  which  can  be  called  sovereign, 
because  not  held  by  delegation  from  a  per- 
sonal superior,  and  themselves  the  only  power- 
holders  to  make  the  Constitution  law  for  any- 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  pp.  9, 35. 


of  a  Revolution.  99 

body  ?  A  court  adjudicating  between  parties 
before  it,  in  cases  under  known  law,  and  a 
body  whose  opinions  can  determine  future 
relations  between  distinct  political-power-hold- 
ers, being  itself  identified  with  one  of  them, 
are  two  very  different  tribunals. 

In  ranking  political  existence  with  "  every- 
thing which  could  properly  be  brought  within 
its  judicial  cognizance,"  the  honored  judge 
probably  had  in  mind  those  cases,  during  the 
civil  war  and  after,  in  which  the  court  affirmed 
the  sonorous  apothegm — "  an  indestructible 
union  of  indestructible  States,"  which  our  Col- 
lege Quarterly  treats  as  fantastic  idealism. 

Political  existence,  in  any  true  sense  of  the 
words,  is  a  matter  of  fact ;  not  a  relation  under 
law  or  determinable  by  courts  of  law.  From 
those  famous  cases,  in  which  we  were  puzzling 
Europe  by  insisting  on  the  treason  of  the  citi- 
zen while  affirming  the  belligerent  sovereignty 
of  his  State,  Americans  may  have  concluded 
they  have  solved  the  problem  in  politics  which 
Rousseau  compared  with  the  quadrature  of  the 
circle  in  geometry — to  find  a  form  of  govern- 
ment which  shall  place  law  above  man.  If  our 
judiciary  thought  the  written  constitution  ade- 


ioo  The  Centennial 

quate  for  this  solution,  it  may  be  an  illustra- 
tion of  Diderot's  remark — "  Les  plus  mauvais 
politiques  sont  communcment  les  juriscousultes, 
parce  qitils  sont  toujour s  tentc's  de  rapporter  les 
affaires  publiques  a  la  routine  des  affaires  priv- 
ees. 

Fact — basal  political  fact— fact  of  existing 
power  and  will  to  make  law — was  and  is  and 
always  will  be  the  thing  wanted ;  and  this  fact 
is  now,  for  us,  in  our  day,  revealed.  Adoption, 
federal  compact,  social  compact,  and  every 
other  fiction  and  fantasy  shall  be  swept  off  to 
the  limbo  of  busted  superstitions.  The  fact  is 
made  known  by  Political  Science — the  fact  of 
Revolution — a  people  continuing  in  a  Revolu- 
tion. 

Our  anniversaries  being  thus  secured  to  us, 
as  marking  the  continued  duration  of  some- 
thing the  nature  of  which  we  are  just  begin- 
ning to  understand,  how  shall  we  Americans 
worthily  celebrate  a  centennial  ? 

Will  any  say  that  all  we  had,  personally,  to 
do  was  to  score  one  hundred  and  go  on  our 
way  rejoicing?  To  smile  over  it  if  we  liked 
it,  or  ignore  it  if  we  did  not  ?  But  though  we 
all  have  wished  to  celebrate  this  first  centen- 


of  a  Revolution,  101 

nial,  if  not  for  the  credit  of  our  forefathers,  at 
least  for  our  own  self-complacency,  why  should 
we  not  also,  even  yet,  celebrate  it  in  the  hope 
that,  by  so  doing,  those  who  are  destined  to 
follow  us  may  be  more  secure  of  like  anniver- 
saries and  like  centennials  ?  Was  it  enough  to 
have  made  the  Bird  of  Freedom  scream  and 
fly  aloft  in  our  old  vain-glorious  style  ?  Can 
we  not  now,  in  the  year  between  1887  and 
1889,  do  better  by  doing  what  those  fore- 
fathers may  be  supposed  to  have  been  doing 
in  the  year  between  1787  and  1789;  by  forcing 
ourselves  to  look  at  the  consequences  which 
should  logically  have  followed  and  may  yet 
follow  that  revolutionary  change  which  they 
and  wre  called  "  adoption  "  ;  confessing  how  far 
r/c  may  yet  be  from  their  full  fruition  and  then 
pledging  ourselves  to  promote  it  ?  Our  college 
authorities  explain  that  their  object  is  not  at 
this  time  "  to  inspire  belief,  but  to  excite  scep- 
ticism." Scepticism  in  what  ?  In  our  Ameri- 
can jingoism,  diawvinism — our  spread-eagle- 
ism? No;  perhaps  not  so  much  in  that. 
That  they  may  as  well  let  us  keep  for  use  in 
the  later  progress  of  the  Revolution.  But 
scepticism  as  to  our  own  intelligence,  in  not 


102  The  Centennial 

advancing  more  steadfastly  in  the  same  glori- 
ous path. 

Now  really,  are  not  one  hundred  and  odd 
years  long  enough,  even  in  a  nation's  life,  to 
be  going  about  under  an  alias  ?  Where  is  the 
sense  in  anybody's  saying  "  United  States  " 
when  there  are  no  "  States"  to  be  united  :  no 
voluntary  union  between  the  simulacra  that 
have  been  so  miscalled  ?  Even  if  there  is 
nothing  to  which  the  name,  as  a  noun  plural, 
is  suited,  it  is  stupid  to  give  the  name  to  a 
Central  Government,  as  many  of  our  Legiti- 
mists like  to  do,  by  way  of  gentle  insinuation 
that  the  sovereign  known  among  nations  by 
that  name  is  found  in  the  President,  Congress 
and  Judiciary  for  the  time  being.  These 
names — States,  Federal  States,  United  States, 
are  shadows  ;  silly  ghosts  haunting  the  de- 
cayed abodes  of  the  usurpers  of  1781,  which 
now  beguile  and  betray  credulous  souls. 

But,  as  names  after  all,  are  not  things,  these 
may  pass  some  time  longer ;  if  not  for  conven- 
ience, yet  for  old  acquaintance'  sake.  There 
are  other  things,  more  essential,  as  lingering 
assertions  of  the  old  usurped  power,  which 
should  not  be  left  to  puzzle  and  misdirect  sue- 


of  a  Revolution.  103 

cessive  generations  as  they  have  those  of  the 
last  century  in  the  matter  of  loyalty  and  alle- 
giance. Why  should  the  personnel,  the  embod- 
iment of  the  only  real  holder  of  sovereign  in- 
dependent power,  if  any  such  embodiment  is 
supposable  in  a  Revolutionary  era,  depend  for 
its  very  existence  on  the  caprice  of  certain 
folk  selected  and  qualified,  individually,  as 
electors,  by  themselves  corporately — as  being 
"commonwealth,"  or  self-constituted  State? 
How  confusing  to  minds  of  even  average  intel- 
ligence is  this  bizarre  arrangement  ■  that  an 
actually  sovereign  Government,  the  only  possi- 
ble representative  of  the  only  possible  sover- 
eignty, should  derive  its  very  existence  from 
the  continued  good-will  and  diligence  of  some, 
as  in  1 861-7,  if  not  of  all,  of  a  lot  of  subject 
corporations.  Think  "  of  the  immense  change  " 
made  in  "  the  relation  between  the  State  and 
the  Nation  in  the  new  system  "  inaugurated 
by  the  revolutionary  adoption  of  1787,  accord- 
ing to  our  Quarterly,  which  appears  to  accept 
the  common  notion  that,  as  historical  fact, 
each  State  of  the  thirteen  could,  before  that, 
claim  several  independence  as  a  sovereign 
nation. 


104  The  Centennial 

Y  In  the  first  place  sovereignty  could  no 
longer  be  claimed  as  a  state  attribute,  nor 
separate  independence.  Sovereignty  resided 
alone  in  the  people  of  the  whole  Nation  and  a 
state  could  be  legally  bound  in  organic  changes 
against  its  will.  In  the  second  place,  it  with- 
drew all  of  the  really  political  functions  from 
the  states  and  vested  them  in  the  Nation's 
governmental  representative  :  viz., — the  powers 
of  war  and  peace,  of  diplomacy  and  commerce, 
the  regulation  of  internal  intercourse,  of 
finance  and  the  monetary  system,  of  the  mili- 
tary system  and  of  the  local  governmental  sys- 
tern  [that  is,  of  what  we  used  to  call  the  State 
government].  It  left  to  the  states  thus  mainly 
jural  and  police  functions."* 

How  absurd  then  that  such  an  apparently 
"real  political  function"  as  determining  the 
continued  existence  of  the  very  government 
now  vested  with  all  the  really  "  real  political 
functions  "  should  remain  with  these  shadows 
of  states,  these  commonwealths. 

This  silly  discrepancy  in  the  work  of  the 
revolutionist    fathers   of    1787    is,    with    two 

. 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  22 


of  a  Revolution.  105 

others,  like  the  constant  affirmation  in  a 
monarchical  country  of  the  claims  of  a  fallen 
dynasty;  yet — "For  seventy-two  years,  only 
the  span  of  a  single  human  life,  we  lived  under 
this  relation  of  commonwealths  to  Nation. 
For  seventy  years  we  imagined  it  per- 
manent and  perfect,  when  suddenly  the  iron 
logic  of  events  demonstrated  the  fact  that  still 
too  much  had  been  left  under  the  control  of 
the  local  organizations,  and  that  the  Nation 
must  narrow  still  further  their  sphere  of 
action/'* 

Something  was  effected  in  1865-7,  in  the 
direction  of  nationalizing  the  whole  of  our 
private  law,  by  limiting  the  powers  of  all  these 
"  local  organizations,"  North  and  South,  by 
constitutional  Amendments.  This  seemed  to 
be  of  some  importance,  even  then.  But  some 
time  or  other  we   shall  find  that — 

"  Here  was  another  immense  change  in  the 
relation    of   commonwealth    to    Nation.  .  .  . 
By  this  last  change  the  commonwealths  have 
been   substantially   assigned    to    the    office  of 
administering  the   system   of  private  law   be- 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  L,  p.  23. 


io6  The  Centennial 

tween  persons  resident  within  their  bounds 
and  supplementing  its  defects,  and  exercising 
the  police  power  in  behalf  of  the  community 
[commune  f]  against  the  too  wide  extension  of 
individual  rights — all  upon  the  basis,  however, 
of  fundamental  principles  prescribed  by  the 
Nation,  and  upheld  by  the  Nation's  organs  of 
central  government.  In  the  way,  however,  of 
their  complete  relegation  to  this  position  stand 
three  things.  The  first  is  their  large  control, 
legislative  and  administrative,  over  the  elec- 
tions of  the  organs  of  the  central  government. 
The  second  is  the  election  of  the  members  of 
the  national  senate  by  the  commonwealth  leg- 
islatures. And  the  third  is  the  equal  repre- 
sentation of  the  commonwealths  in  the  na- 
tional senate.  The  first  may  be  changed,  ex- 
cept as  to  the  election  of  the  electors  of  the 
national  executive,  by  a  simple  law  passed  by 
the  national  legislature.  The  second,  and  that 
part  of  the  first  not  subject  to  the  legislation 
of  Congress  [qualification  of  voters,  perhaps?], 
may  be  changed  by  the  general  process  of 
amendment  prescribed  in  the  constitution. 
But  the  third  is  the  stronghold  of  confederat- 
ism,  and  most    probably  cannot  be  changed 


of  a  Revolution.  107 

save  by  a  revolutionary  act.  They  are  all 
relics  of  the  usurpation  of  1781."* 

We  used  to  think  the  late  Professor  Pomeroy 
a  pretty  stiff  legitimist  for  his  day.  But  with 
all  his  talk  about  the  Nation  as  the  sole  au- 
thority for  any  constitution,  and  his  qualified 
acceptance  of  the  discovery  of  revolution  in 
1787  against  State  usurpation,  he,  rather  in- 
consistently perhaps,  still  fancied  the  States  as 
having  powers  to  give  or  withhold.  He  had 
not  enough  sand,  quite,  for  the  continuing 
Revolution.     He  said, — 

"  It  is  certainly  however,  an  anomaly,  that 
the  general  government  of  the  United  States 
should  have  no  control  over  its  own  delegates 
in  Congress  ;  that  it  should  be  powerless  to 
define  the  qualifications  of  congressional  elec- 
tors. It  must  be  conceded  that  this  is  a  de- 
fect in  our  organic  law  which  needs  amend- 
ment. It  was  a  necessary  and  unfortunate 
concession  to  the  theory  of  State  sovereignty 
and  independence.  One  code  of  rules  should 
certainly  prevail  throughout  the  country  to 
regulate  the  choice  of  representatives,  and  this 

*  P.  s.  Q.,  I.,  pp.  23-24. 


io8  The  Centennial 

should  be  the  work  of  Congress  or  of  the 
people  in  its  sovereign  capacity.  The  nation 
should  dictate  in  the  selection  of  its  own  legis- 
lators. The  integrity  of  the  States  is  suffi- 
ciently guarded  by  allowing  to  each  an  equal 
voice  in  the  Senate,  and  by  permitting  them 
to  appoint  Senators  and  to  control  the  selec- 
tion of  Presidential  electors.  The  more 
national  branch  of  Congress,  that  which  comes 
directly  from  the  people,  should  be  entirely 
under  the  management  of  the  one  body  politic 
which  is  represented  in  the  general  govern- 
ment." 

Pomeroy  was  only  giving  his  own  idea  of 
political  expediency.  He  did  not  pretend  to 
declare  the  political  right  or  power  as  our 
Quarterly  does.  But  how  could  he,  poor  man  ! 
while  still  dreaming  of  "the  integrity  of  the 
States?"  What  an  ancient  fossil  he  was,  to 
be  sure ! 

That  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  is 
composed  of  two  Senators  from  each  State — 
is  a  "  relic  of  usurpation"  as  suggesting  the 
existence  of  a  confederacy  of  equals.  But  it 
is  the  method  of  electing  Senators,  that  is,  by 
the  State   legislatures,    that    more   essentially 


of  a  Revolution.  109 

deserves  the  opprobrious  designation.  For 
nobody  has  yet  discovered  a  constitutional 
clause  authorizing  the  Central  Government  to 
secure  its  own  duration,  so  far  as  the  Senate 
is  concerned,  by  interfering  in  the  electoral 
action  of  the  State  legislatures.  Senators 
might  still  be  said  to  represent  the  State  or 
"  commonwealth,"  as  such,  when  chosen  di- 
rectly by  the  voting  people.  But,  in  the 
golden  future,  when  the  electoral  action  of 
that  people  is  regulated,  as  well  as  the  posses- 
sion of  the  electoral  franchise,  by  the  central 
legislature — then,  when  the  State  legislatures 
have  been  compelled  to  surrender  their 
usurped  power,  the  Central  Government  may 
feel  itself  a  continuing  personality,  like  any 
other  sovereign. 

It  is  the  independence  of  the  State  in  choos- 
ing senators ;  not  the  fact  that  in  the  Senate 
the  States  are  equally  represented ;  that  is 
incongruous  with  the  claims  of  a  superior  cen- 
tral existence.  If  there  is  any  necessity  or 
advantage  in  having  two  houses  for  the  busi- 
ness of  a  central  legislature,  or  national  parlia- 
ment, there  are  a  dozen  ways  for  producing 
either  one,  without  distinguishing  it  as  being 


1 1 0  The  Centennial 

a  relic  of  usurpation  and  popular  blindness 
more  than  the  other. 

This  position  of  a  Government,  in  respect 
to  its  ability  to  provide  for  its  own  existence, 
— if  it  be  a  sovereign  government  as  distinct 
from  the  agent  or  instrument  of  some  external 
possessor  of  sovereignty — is  such  a  strange 
anomaly  that  those  in  France  who  there 
would  advocate  some  representative  system, 
are  probably  unable  to  conceive  of  its  exist- 
ence. There,  where  there  is  nothing  to  cor- 
respond to  our  " relics  of  usurpation" — States 
as  we  used  to  think  of  them  —  and  where 
there  are  only  the  Depart ements,  the  Govern- 
ment for  the  time  being  takes  care  of  itself, 
by  taking  charge  of  the  so-called  Constitution. 

Why  should  not  our  Central,  or  Imperial 
Government,  as  some  like  to  call  it,  secure 
its  own  continuance  by  providing  for,  regu- 
lating and,  if  need  be,  compelling  the  action 
of  voters  in  electing  the  persons  to  constitute 
its  successors  in  its  various  branches  and  at 
the  same  time  require  their  assent,  as  State, 
to  an  Amendment  sanctioning  this  ?  Indeed, 
was  not  this  done,  virtually,  in  the  case  of 
some  eleven  ''commonwealths"  which,   if  we 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1  i 

are  not  ready  to  throw  overboard  the  political 
opinions  of  the  Supreme  Court,  as  unscientific, 
were  States,  at  the  time,  as  much  as  the 
others  ;  that  is,  if  there  are  or  were  then  any 
such  "  relics  "  hereabouts  ? 

Will  any  say — But  these  were  of  the  wicked  ? 
Somebody  had  to  decide  on  that.  Somebody 
will  have  to  decide  on  the  nature  and  degree 
of  wickedness.  If  the  Central  Government 
was  sovereign  in  that  instance  and  accountable 
to  none,  why  not  equally  in  respect  to  any 
State?  Did  not  the  Supreme  Court,  during 
the  Reconstruction  era,  repeatedly  say  that 
there  was  a  "political  department"  of  the 
Government,  having  the  power  to  decide  on 
such  a  question  ? 

Again,  such  being  the  source  and  founda- 
tion of  all  power,  civil  or  military,  executive. 
legislative,  and  judicial,  how  can  government 
here  rest  squarely  on  its  true  basis — a  uniform 
folk  or  population — if  a  group  of  five  or  six 
puny  "  commonwealths  "  still  calling  them- 
selves States,  send  the  force  of  ten  or  twelve 
members  to  the  Senate,  when  there  are  a 
dozen  others,  each  with  a  present  or  prospec 


1 1 2  The  Centennial 

tive  population  larger  than  this   entire   bunch 
of  States,  sending  only  two  apiece  ? 

Funny?  to  be  sure ;  but  there's  a  constitu- 
tional pledge  on  that  point,  given  to  each 
State  !  Quotha  ?  well,  yes  ;  to  States  and  that 
was  put  in  by  those  framers  only  because 
common  folks,  when  summoned  to  ratify  the 
constitution  in  1787-8,  didn't  see  the  Revolu- 
tion in  it  and  very  likely  supposed  that  there 
were  States  then,  and  that  States  there  would 
be,  thereafter.  But  where  is  the  pledge  for 
commonwealths?  Our  Professors  indicate 
that,  if  unreasonable,  in  not  conforming  them- 
selves to  the  philosophical  and  physical  and 
ethnical  basis  of  the  Nation,  any  such  petty 
corporations  will  insist  on  the  consideration 
accorded  in  the  usurpation  time  to  the  States 
whose  position  they  claim  to  have  inherited, 
some  more  revolution  will  be  in  order,  speak- 
ing rather  mixedly ;  that  is,  not  a  whole  revo- 
lution, perhaps,  but  a  little  more  of  the  same 
sort,  to  be  called  adoption  perhaps,  or  perhaps, 
a  reconstruction.  But  as  the  loudest  in  main- 
taining the  sovereign  Nation  doctrine  have 
been  found  within  their  boundaries,  at  least 
since  the  time  of  Mr.  Adams'  Jubilee  oration, 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1 3 

it  may  be  expected  that  this  little  group  of 
commonwealths  would  cxultingly  unite  in 
conforming  themselves  to  our  Legitimist  doc- 
trine, by  renouncing  some  portion  of  their 
oligarchical  prerogative. 

These  suggestions  do  not  call  our  attention 
to  mere  legalized  abuses,  ignored  immoralities, 
permissive  ignorances,  or  to  injustices  like 
civil  or  social  disqualifications,  or  monopolies, 
or  favoritisms  for  some  spheres  of  activity  to 
the  disadvantage  or  destruction  of  others.  If 
such  can  be,  where  all  are  called  free  and 
equal,  since  all  human  government  is  imper- 
fect, yet  reformation  in  the  line  of  the  pursuit 
of  happiness  may  be  expected  from  a  supreme 
legislative  in  new  ways  ;  as  well  as  by  distribu- 
tion of  surplus-revenue  in  quarters  where  it 
may  do  most  good.  The  anomalies  we  have 
been  talking  about  are  dislocations,  congenital 
malformations,  structural  faults  in  the  body- 
politic,  requiring  heroic  treatment  to  save  life. 

It  would  be  strange  however,  if,  incidental 
to  these,  there  were  not  grave  disorders,  waste- 
ful of  energy  and  preventing  the  free  action  of 
the  vital  forces  of  the  republic. 

What  a  waste  of  time  and  money,  to  say 
8 


1 1 4  The  Centennial 

nothing  of  nerves  and  brains,  in  what  we  call 
the  law.  Why  must  there  be  a  complete  sys- 
tem of  private  law — law  regulating  relations  of 
persons  in  private  life,  as  distinct  from  the 
public  or  constitutional  law — in  each  State  or 
commonwealth,  big  or  little  ?  Why  must 
each  have  its  loads  of  statute-books  and  of 
volumes  of  reported  decisions,  which  have  no 
authority  beyond  the  State  limits  ?  The  com- 
mon-law of  England  was  said,  with  some 
truth,  a  century  ago,  to  be  a  general  law 
among  the  States ;  yet  only  so  far  as  not  af- 
fected by  State  legislation,  State  customs  and 
State  judge-made  law.  How  much  community 
of  old  English  common-law  remains  now  in 
State  jurisprudence?  Just  now  there  is  a  call 
for  codes  to  displace  all  "  common "  law. 
That  means  a  code-civil  and  code-criminal  for 
each  State ;  each  one  costing  thousands  to  the 
State  in  its  production  ;  benefiting  lawyers  by 
the  thousand.  Are  human  conditions  so  dif- 
ferent in  different  States  ?  Think  of  the  six 
New  England  States,  homogeneous  in  feeling 
and  interests,  with  six  separate  jurisprudence- 
apparatus.  The  French  code-civil  superseded 
the  various  laws  of  the  provinces  of  old  France 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1 5 

and,  in  Napoleon's  time,  was  carried  into  ad- 
joining countries,  German  and  Italian,  differing 
in  race  and  language,  and  there  remains. 
Think  of  the  domestic  relations,  of  the  various 
laws  of  inheritance.  Where  would  the  Mor- 
mon question  be  to-day  if  there  had  been  a 
national  law  of  marriage  and  divorce  ?  Who 
gets  the  best  out  of  all  this  but  the  constantly 
increasing  tribe  of  pettifoggers  ? 

What  is  citizenship  but  rights  under  law? 
One  citizenship — one  law.  WTas  there  any  one- 
citizenship  under  the  phrase — (Article  IV.  of 
the  constitution  of  1787) — "The  citizens  of 
each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  the  privi- 
leges and  immunities  of  citizens  in  the  sev- 
eral States;"  that  is — such  as  they  might 
be  by  the  law  of  the  several  States?  Local 
jurisprudence  was  restricted  at  that  time,  more 
or  less,  by  some  other  provisions  in  that  con- 
stitution. Is  there  any  more  one  law  for  citi- 
zenship now?  Is  there  any  more  national  citi- 
zenship now  ?  Now,  when  after  seventy-two 
years  of  weak  self-complacency,  always  holding 
up  the  blessings  of  local  self-government  to 
the  envious  gaze  of  the  effete  monarchies, 
"  the  iron  logic  of  events,"  that  we  have  just 


1 1 6  The  Centennial 

heard  about,  demonstrated  the  Nation's  obli- 
gation to  clip  the  political  wings  and  talons  of 
the  local  organizations  ?  Did  the  Nation  do 
more,  by  affecting  their  sphere  of  action  in  pri- 
vate law,  when,  by  Article  XIV.  of  Amend- 
ments : — 

"  It  now  placed  bounds  to  their  wide-reach- 
ing powers  in  the  domain  of  the  jural  and 
police  regulations,  by  making  citizenship 
national,  decreeing  the  equality  of  civil  rights, 
and  limiting  the  whole  of  their  authority  by 
the  principle  of  the  due  process  of  law  as  in- 
terpreted by  the  national  judiciary.  Here  was 
another  immense  change  in  the  relation  of 
commonwealth  to  Nation."* 

What  a  sad  thought — that  the  Supreme 
Court  was  not  up  to  this  "  immense  change  " 
when  the  appeal  was  made  to  it  by  those  revo- 
lutionist brethren  who  were  hanged,  as  Anar- 
chists, under  Illinois  State-citizenship  law,  last 
autumn ! 

Perhaps  the  Court  might  have  taken  a  differ- 
ent view  of  such  an  appeal,  some  ten  or  fifteen 

*  P.  s.  Q.,  I.,  p.  23. 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1  7 

years  before ;  for  we  shall  be  called  to  notice 
that— 

"For  ten  years  now  (1886)  we  have  been 
passing  through  a  period  of  reaction  against 
the  pronounced  nationalism  of  the  previous  fif- 
teen."" 

Though  perhaps  it  was  the  National  legisla- 
ture that  should  have  first  set  to  work,  if — 

"  There  is  now  really  nothing  further  neces- 
sary, in  the  domain  of  constitutional  law,  to 
enable  the  Nation's  governmental  organs  to 
nationalize,  in  fundamental  principle,  the 
whole  of  our  private  law,  just  as  there  is  noth- 
ing further  necessary  than  the  existing  provi- 
sion imposing  upon  these  organs  the  duty  of 
maintaining  republicanism  in  our  local  forms, 
to  enable  them  to  nationalize  at  almost  every 
point,  the  whole  of  our  public  law."f 

In  a  later  article  in  the  same  Quarterly,  par- 
ticularly directed  to  this  aspect  of  our  legal 
future,  and  contributed  by  another  member  of 
the  same  Faculty,  we  are  told — 

"  Whether  it  be  by  change  of  constitutional 
interpretation      or    by     direct     constitutional 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  25.  t  P.  S.  Q.  I,  p.  23. 


1 1 8  The  Centennial 

amendment,  there  is  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  the 
Nation  will  find  a  way  to  make  its  law  national. 
No  theory  of  State  rights,  no  jealousy  or  fear 
of  centralization,  will  prevent  so  practical  a 
people  as  ours  from  satisfying  its  real  needs."  * 

But  how  or  why  distinguish  between  public 
and  private  law  in  any  relation  between  the 
Nation  and  the  commonwealths?  Does  pri- 
vate law  become  public  by  being  engrossed  in 
a  State  constitution  ?  What  are  State  consti- 
tutions now-a-days  but  imperfect  codes  ;  by 
removing  so  many  specified  relations  of  pri- 
vate persons  from  the  ordinary  power  of  the 
State  legislatures? 

"The  legislatures  in  nearly  all  of  these  re- 
cent instruments  have  been  deprived  of  their 
previously  almost  unlimited  powers  of  legisla- 
tion upon  most  important  subjects,  such  as 
the  raising  and  appropriating  of  money,  the 
exercise  of  the  right  of  eminent  domain  and 
the  creation  of  corporations?"  f 

Instancing  these,  our  Quarterly  says  % — 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  III.,  p.   164.     Article,  State  Statute   and   Com- 
mon Law. 
t  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  28. 
J  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  30. 


of  a  Revolution.  1 1 9 

"  To  these  must  then  be  added  scores  of  pro- 
visions prohibiting  absolutely  legislative  action 
in  regard  to  certain  subjects,  requiring  it  abso- 
lutely in  regard  to  others,  fettering  special 
legislation  and  making  wide-reaching  excep- 
tions from  its  scope  of  action." 

Then  as  to  the  State  Governor.  He  too  is 
shown  up  as  having  fallen  off  "  in  dignity,  im- 
portance and  power,"  if  at  a  more  intermittent 
rate.  But  this  difference  indicates  something. 
We  may  say — 

"  That  he  has  lost  far  less  than  the  legisla- 
ture during  the  last  forty  years :  which  is  one 
more  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the  true  sphere 
of  the  commonwealth  government  is  adminis- 
tration rather  than  legislation.  Nevertheless, 
he  is  not  regarded  either  by  the  Nation  or  by 
the  part  of  it  resident  within  the  particular 
commonwealth,  as  the  important  personage 
that  he  was  before  1861."* 

By  the  part  of  the  Nation,  that  is,  we  must 
suppose,  by  the  whole  population  of  the  State, 
whether  voters  or  not,  but  holding  political 
power  as  a  piece  of  sovereign  nation.     For,  as 

*  P.  S.  Q,  1.,  p.  31. 


120  The  Centennial 

for  the  fancy  that  the  voters,  holding  the  fran- 
chise under  their  own  State  law,  who  freely 
enacted  these  constitutional  changes  and  who 
could  change  them  back,  being  a  distinct  polit- 
ical power — that  notion  of  the  old  usurpation 
time  must  go  with  the  rest  to  the  tombs  of  the 
Capulets. 

As  for  the  fact  that  "  these  recent  constitu- 
tions have  decreased  the  dignity  and  influence 
of  the  commonwealth  judiciary,"  it  is  all  mat- 
ter of  daily  newspaper  comment,  and  so  we 
can  leave  it ;  only  remembering  this  hint,  that, 
if  the  sphere  of  the  State  judiciaries  has  lost 
less  by  State-constitutional  limitation  than  the 
other  branches,  "  this  is  again  evidence  of  the 
principle  that  the  sphere  of  the  commonwealth 
government  is  administration  rather  than  legis- 
lation, and  judicial  administration  more  than 
executive  administration."* 

Such  being  the  facts,  we  are  taught  to  draw 
an  inference,  founded  indeed  on  the  theory 
that  a  State  of  the  Union  always  was  what  it 
was  only  as  its  administrative  government  was 
what   it    might   be  ;  there   being,  as  we  have 

*  P.  s.  Q.,  I.,  p.  32. 


of  a  Revolution.  1 2 1 

been  shown,  no  such  thing,  really,  as  a  polit- 
ical people  of  a  State,  but  only  a  portion  of 
that  population  which  we  call  "  the  Nation." 
We  are  told  : — 

11  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  we  have  in  all 
this  a  great  decline  in  the  dignity,  influence, 
and  power  of  the  commonwealth  legislatures, 
and  therefore  {therefore?]  of  the  common- 
wealths themselves.  It  is  unmistakable  that  a 
stronger  consciousness  of  nationality,  a  larger 
confidence  in  the  national  government  and  a 
pronounced  distrust  of  the  commonwealth 
governments  have  taken  possession  of  the 
whole  people,  and  are  now  realizing  them- 
selves  in  the  constitutional  and  legal  transfor. 
mations  of  our  entire  political  system."* 

The  writer  in  our  Quarterly,  in  the  sam^ 
article,  also  says — 

"  The  commonwealth  is  purely  a  creation  ot 
law  and  is  identical  with  its  political  organiza* 
tion.  I  am  endeavoring,  by  this  analysis,  to 
lead  up  the  mind  of  the  reader  to  the  proposi- 
tion that  when  the  people  resident  within  the 
commonwealth    withdraw    powers    from    the 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  30. 


122  The   Centennial 

government  of  the  commonwealth,  the  result 
is  practically  a  change  in  the  position  of  the 
commonwealth  and  not  simply  a  redistribution 
of  powers  between  different  organs  of  the 
commonwealth."* 

As  the  State  or  commonwealth  is  now  to  be 
held  to  exist  only  as  its  local  government 
may  subsist,  it  may  not  be  very  clear  where 
the  powers  thus  abstracted  from  State  govern- 
ments, singly,  from  time  to  time,  by  the  peo- 
ple of  a  State,  or  piece  of  the  Nation,  are  to 
go.  In  the  times  of  our  ignorance,  "  confi- 
dence in  the  national  government  "  was  shown 
only  when  three-fourths  of  the  States  united 
in  placing  power  in  its  hands ;  while  simul- 
taneously withdrawing  it  from  each  and  every 
State.  If  the  doctrine  of  conservation  of  force 
applies  in  political  as  in  physical  science,  the 
powers  now  withheld  from  the  organs  of 
States,  by  their  recent  state  constitutions,  ought 
to  be  somewhere  ;  lying  round  loose,  perhaps, 
in  our  revolutionary  era,  to  be  picked  up  by  the 
Central  Government,  in  the  sweet  bye-and- 
bye.     But  though  the   people,  so  called,  of   a 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I,  pp.  25,  26. 


of  a  Revolution.  123 

State,  so  called,  has  been  maiming  itself  while 
maiming  its  local  government,  the  same  peo- 
ple, so  called,  may,  at  the  same  time  be 
obliged  to  recognize  the  Commune,  wherever 
that  may  be  discernible,  as  the  only  other  al- 
ways possible  depositary  for  the  time  being : 
since,  by  the  axioms  of  our  political  science,  it, 
beside  the  Nation,  is  the  only  natural  political 
reality.     So  we  are  told  to  observe  that : — 

"  These  more  recent  instruments  [State 
constitutions]  contain  provisions  constitution- 
alizing  the  municipal  divisions  of  the  common- 
wealth, i.e.,  defending  them  in  greater  or  less 
degree,  against  the  power  of  the  government 
of  the  commonwealth,  securing  their  bounda- 
ries, establishing  their  organizations,  defining 
their  powers,  prescribing  the  tenure  and  duties 
of  their  officers,  etc.  This  is  a  most  serious 
question.  It  demonstrates  the  fact  that  the 
government  of  the  commonwealth  has  ceased  to 
be  in  many  respects  the  natural  local  govern- 
ment It  threatens  the  dissolution  of  the  com- 
monwealth through  the  consolidation  of  the 
municipalities."  (Note  "  Counties  and  Cities  ").* 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  P  32. 


124  The  Centennial 

Our  teachers  would  have  us  observe  : — 

"  That  while  the  legislative  and  judicial 
powers  exercised  at  the  beginning  of  the  cent- 
ury by  the  governments  of  the  common- 
wealths are  gravitating  towards  the  national 
government  in  greater  or  less  degree,  the 
police  powers,  on  the  other  hand,  are  passing 
over  to  the  municipalities,  and  that  this  result 
is  being  produced  as  much  by  dissolution  from 
within  as  by  centralization  from  without,  if 
not  more."* 

So  we  see  that  while  the  former  States  have 
been  surely,  though  quietly,  approximating  to 
the  political  status  of  a  French  De'partement 
under  a  central  head — King,  Emperor,  or  As- 
sembly— there  is  a  local  absolutism,  in  the 
hands  of  irresponsible  majorities,  gradually 
forming,  which  may  find  its  exemplar  in  those 
peasant  communities  (the  Mir)  in  Russia,  de- 
scribed in  Tolstoi's  novels ;  which  have  consti- 
tuded  the  political  liberty  of  Tartar  races 
whenever  their  nomad  state  was  merged  in  a 
territorial  settlement. 

When  we  think  of  New  York  or  Chicago  as 

*  P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  33. 


of  a  Revolution.  125 

commune,  under  the  irresponsible  management 
of  something  like  a  board  of  Aldermen,  we  re- 
call old  Marshal  Bliicher's  admiring  sugges- 
tion, when,  after  Waterloo,  his  English  friends 
showed  him  around  London — "  Mein  Gott  ! 
was  fur  Pliindern  !  What  a  city  for  to  sack !  " 
Truly,  "  This  is  a  most  serious  question" — 
for  somebody. 

We  begin  to  learn  from  all  this  how  our 
Revolution,  started  in  1787,  has  been  a-going 
it.  Those  who  all  along  had  been  regarded  as 
governing  their  State,  independently,  as  a  dis- 
tinct political  people,  by  a  subordinate  instru- 
mentality— legislative,  executive,  judicial — 
have,  as  a  portion  of  the  sovereign-Nation 
people  in  their  commonwealth,  really,  if  per- 
haps unconsciously,  or  by  a  blind  instinct  of 
nationality,  been  revolting,  piece-meal-wise, 
against  their  former  selves,  while  apparently 
exercising  their  old  political  power  as  State,  in 
proclaiming  their  several  constitutions.  This 
is  just  what  might  be  expected  in  a  continuing 
revolution,  begun  without  any  State's  knowl- 
edge, when  they  ratified  themselves  into  in- 
cipient nonentity,  to  be  revealed  in  course  of 
a  century  as  scientific  nationality. 


126  The  Centennial 

Nobody  need  get  disgruntled  over  this  ap- 
parent confusion,  for  we  can  find  the  great 
balance-wheel  for  our  constant  Revolution  pre- 
pared for  us  a  hundred  years  agone  and  fully 
set  a-going,  improved  and  readjusted  to  its 
office  in  the  Reconstruction  time,  1865-7.  As 
citizenship  is,  or  is  to  be  national,  all  the  rights 
and  duties  of  a  citizen  are  dependent  on  the 
measure  of  justice  given  by  the  organ  which 
stands  for  the  Nation.  A  new  meaning  is  to 
be  given  to,  or  a  truer  understanding  has  been 
had  of  the  guaranty  of  a  "  republican  form  of 
government  "  to  "  every  State  in  this  Union," 
declared  in  Article  IV. 

It  used  to  be  supposed  that  it  was  a  pledge, 
given  by  somebody,  to  each  State,  or  political 
people  of  each  State  in  the  Union,  that  it  should 
constitute  an  independent,  self-governing  body 
in  the  Union.  But  when  we  once  understand 
that  this  State  and  this  people  of  a  State  have 
no  real  existence,  that  they  are  like  legal 
fictions  for  lawyers'  use,  we  comprehend  that 
the  beneficiaries  of  the  guaranty  are  the  sev- 
eral portions  of  the  Nation  in  geographical 
districts,  entitled  to  such  an  administration  of 
law  for  rights  and  duties,  civil  and  political,  as 


of  a  Rcvolutio)i.  127 

may  be  called  republicanism,  which  should  be 
as  attainable  in  one  commonwealth  as  in  an- 
other. 

In  view  of  this  our  venerable  College  shows 
us  how  to  modify  our  ancient  reading  of  the 
letter  which  killeth,  by  saying  : — * 

11  The  requirement  (art.  4.  sec.  4)  of  the  pres- 
ent constitution  that  the  "  United  States " 
shall  preserve  republicanism  (sic)  in  the  State 
governments,  vests  in  Congress  the  power  to 
determine  in  what  republican  forms  and  institu- 
tions consist,  i.e.,  to  prescribe  the  only  legiti- 
mate form  of  local  government  which  the  Na- 
tion suffers  to  exist The  Congress  has 

exercised  the  power  in  every  enabling  Act,  and 
in  the  reconstruction  Acts  of  1867." 

So  that,  plainly,  the  "  United  States  "  will 
execute  this  guaranty,  not  occasionally,  or 
according  to  isolated  exigencies  of  political 
tranquillity,  as  was  done,  it  was  supposed,  in 
the  case  of  Rhode  Island,  but  by  means  of  a 
general  statute,  will  define  republicanism  as  an 
individual  right,  comprehending  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  and  provide  for  a 

*  P.  S.  Q.  I.,  p.  22,  note. 


128  The  Cente?inial 

due  process  of  law  by  which  it  may  be 
defended  in  the  National  Courts. 

Well,  to  know  all  this  is  to  know  much 
worth  knowing;  or  rather,  since  it  is  presented 
by  way  of  inducing  scepticism,  it  should  be  to 
doubt  much  that  is  worth  doubting.  But 
seeing,  as  we  do,  that  faith  is  the  thing  we 
want  just  at  present  for  our  jubilee  and  cen- 
tennial, we  are  bound  to  get  at  it  straight-off, 
somehow  ;  by  scientific  principles  and  reason- 
ing on  the  nature  of  things  in  general,  if  that 
may  be  done,  or  else  by  the  bald  assertion  of 
something  for  the  existence  of  which,  as  fact, 
not  a  shadow  of  evidence  is  produced  and 
which  is  contradicted  by  the  records  that  have 
never  been  disputed. 

Perhaps  those  who  have  thus  compelled  our 
recognition  of  the  continuing  Revolution 
might  have  been  less  candid  if  they  had  been 
invited  to  celebrate  with  us  on  that  last  17th 
of  September.  It  should  seem  a  singular  way 
for  us  to  do  it  by  telling  the  world  how  com- 
pletely the  appearance  of  the  thing  born  one 
hundred  years  before  had  belied  its  reality. 
But  we  have  got  to  face  the  music  in  our  own 
day ;  even  though  all  those  who  preceded  us 


of  a  Revolution.  129 

should  have  lived  in  a  dream.  Let  those 
doubt  who  may  like  it.  We  shall  leave  our 
learned  teachers  and  those  who  may  be  con- 
tent with  doubting,  after  their  fashion,  to  bite 
their  nails  over  this  sceptical  or  negative  side 
of  this  great  subject,  while  we  attend  to  the 
affirmative  ;  accepting  from  them,  as  the  his- 
torical basis  of  faith  and  hope,  the  legend, 
now  well  grown,  of  the  Nation's  Revolution 
in  our  once  revered  Adoption,  proclaiming 
what  we  believe  our  supreme  Government  to 
be,  in  respect  to  us,  and  what  we  are  in  re- 
spect to  our  supreme  Government. 

What  then  is  the  first  duty  of  any  sovereign 
government?  Is  it  not  laid  down  or  assumed 
by  publicists,  as  a  fundamental  axiom,  that  the 
first  duty  of  such  a  government  is  to  itself ; 
the  obligation  to  defend  its  own  existence  ? 
And  is  not  such  obligation  also  its  right  ?  a 
right  correlative  to  duty  on  the  part  of  others? 
others  whose  duty  is  submission — its  own  sub- 
jects? Is  it  not  the  right  of  dominion,  recog- 
nized by  the  world  without,  because  exercised 
over  the  world  within  ? 

This  right  or  self-directed  duty  is  para- 
mount. To  suppose  that  there  is  some  law, 
9 


S 


ijO  The  Centennial 

whether  called  a  constitution  or  not,  to  restrain 
it  is  to  contradict  the  assumption  that  it  is  a 
sovereign  government  ;  for  such  a  law  pre- 
supposes a  law-giver  distinct  from  and  indepen- 
dent of  such  government. 

When  the  existence  of  this  isolated  primary 
right  is  once  established,  all  those  inconsisten- 
cies or  malformations  which  we  are  now  taught 
to  regard  as  relics  of  the  usurpation  period — 
usurpation  of  what  used  to  be  called  "  State 
Sovereignty" — become  of  minor  importance. 
For,  whatever  support  they  may  have  claimed 
from  blind  precedent,  they  will  now,  with  our 
new  insight,  be  always  construed  as  only  sec- 
ondary, or  even  ancillary,  in  relation  to  this 
primary  or  paramount  right.  The  States  will 
then  appear  as  subjects  under  law,  while  the 
Nation — in  its  only  come-at-able  representa- 
tive the  Central  Government — is  above  law. 
This  being  understood,  the  written  constitu- 
tion may,  at  times,  be  disregarded  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  this  government  ;  as  was  declared 
by  many  patriotic  statesmen  it  could,  should, 
and  was,  in  the  civil  war  and  in  reconstruction, 
though  there  is  no  need  of  putting  it  so  rough\ 
Another  teacher,  a   Professor  also  in  another 


of  a  Revolution.  1 3 1 

University,  who  has  also  recently  presented 
this  discovery  of  the  Revolutionary  adoption 
says*  — "  Moreover,  this  boundary  between 
federal  and  state  powers  should  not  be  un- 
changing. As  the  conditions  of  national  life 
change,  it  becomes  necessary  that  the  federal 
government  should  assume  jurisdiction  over 
subjects  which  in  simpler  conditions  are  left  to 
the  states.  With  a  written  constitution, 
which  cannot  be  easily  amended,  it  is  inevita- 
ble that  this  transference  of  power  should  be 
made  by  interpretation.  But  by  whatever 
process*  the  change  is  wrought,  whether  by  in- 
terpretation or  constitutional  amendment,  the 
competence  of  the  State  is  narrowed  even 
against  its  will  by  the  action  of  the  federal 
state." 

This  was  plain  enough  in  Reconstruction, 
when  the  competency  of  eleven  States,  if 
States  they  were,  in  ratifying  amendments  was 
narrowed  against  their  wills. 

We    have    learned    from    our    own  College 

*  Professor  Richard  Hudson,  University  of  Michigan  :  in 
the  New  Eiiglandcr  and  Yale  Review.  January,  iSSS.  Art. 
State  Autonomy  vs  State  Sovereignty,  p.  42. 


132  The  Centennial 

friends  that  "  the  People  is  a  national  concep- 
tion and  preserves  its  integrity  against  govern- 
ment only  as  a  Nation."     They  say  further  : — 

"  Blot  out  the  national  government  and  you 
still  have  the  Nation  physically  and  ethnically, 
which,  by  its  own  innate  power,  will  restore 
its  political  organization ;  but  blot  out  the 
government  of  the  commonwealth  and  you 
have  a  territory  measured  by  the  chain  of  the 
surveyor,  with  a  population  governed  exclu- 
sively by  the  Nation's  organs  and  restored  to 
local  self-government  only  by  the  Nation's 
act."  * 

We  might  ask — Who  is  the  somebody  who 
can  do  the  blotting  out  in  these  cases  ?  Charles 
Sumner's  State-suicide  theory  implied  that 
eleven  States  had  blotted  themselves  out,  as 
political  fact.  Our  professors  give  this  state- 
ment of  theirs  as  an  old  doctrine  of  consti- 
tutional law  by  adding  : — 

"  This  is  really,  though  probably  not  con- 
sciously, what  every  judge  means  when  he 
says  'To  the  Government  of  the  United 
States    that  which  has  not    been    granted    is 

*S.  P.  Q,  I.,  p.  25. 


of  a  Revolution.  133 

denied ;  but  to  the  government  of  the  states 
that  which  has  not  been  denied  is  granted.'  ' 

When  we  recall  how  constantly  this  proposi- 
tion has  been  repeated  by  the  highest  officials, 
from  the  day  when  the  government  was  first 
inaugurated,  we  see  in  what  a  topsy-turvy  rev- 
olutionary chaos  the  whole  thing  has  been  ; 
so  much  so  that  the  best  trained  minds  have 
been  misunderstanding  themselves  and  mis- 
constructing  their  own  words  for  a  whole  cent- 
ury. 

It  is  by  understanding  the  true  position  of 
this  sovereign  Government  that  we  shall  begin 
to  understand  how,  in  the  continued  revolu- 
tion, we  as  a  people  have  had  our  political  ex- 
istence changed  for  us ;  if  we  assume  that  the 
14th  and  15th  Amendments  mean  something, 
or  that  "  national  citizenship  "  has  come  into 
being  as  never  before.  What  sort  of  citizens 
were  we  before?  Are  we  now  individually,  in 
the  eyes  of  foreign  powers  anything  more  or 
less  than  before?  If  they  had  before  recog- 
nized us,  when  within  their  jurisdictions,  as 
citizens  only  as  being  the  subjects  of  some  other 
recognized  sovereignty,  has  our  citizenship 
changed  in  their  eyes  by  some  change  in  their 


134  The  Centennial 

recognition  of  the  sovereignty  ;  as  might  occur 
in  the  case  of  a  conquest?  If  not,  then,  if  our 
citizenship  has  changed  at  all,  it  must  have 
been  by  change  of  some  internal  relation,  not 
noticed  by  foreign  powers. 

If  citizenship  is  to  mean  some  conscious 
possession  of  political  power,  as  legal  right,  has 
that  possession  been  expanded  or  has  it  been 
limited  ?  Does  a  national  citizenship,  in  this 
sense,  exist  at  all,  and  what  is  it,  anyhow  ? 
What  is  any  man's  political  liberty  now,  as  an 
individual  right? 

Understanding  citizen  as  one  of  a  number  of 
voters  known  as  constituting  a  political  unit, 
determining  its  own  existence  by  discriminat- 
ing the  possession  of  the  franchise,  as  a  legal 
right — citizenship  indicates  a  conscious  pos- 
session of  political  right,  or  power — depend- 
ent only  on  the  unit's  voluntary  continuance 
in  union  with  other  such  units.  While  the 
national  Government  had,  as  administrative 
organ,  a  recognized  come-at-able  superior  in 
the  political  people,  existing  as  States  volun- 
tarily united,  there  was  a  national  citizenship 
as  a  political  capacity  distinct  from  national 
civil  citizenship  or  mere  subjection. 


of  a  Revolution.  135 

But,  the  Central  Government  being  re- 
garded as  a  sovereign  Government  in  its  own 
right,  with  no  recognized  superior  but  a  geo- 
graphical ethnical  nation,  as  discernible  by 
professors  of  political  science  and  the  nature 
of  things,  there  is  no  national  citizenship  as  a 
political  capacity.  There  are  no  citizens  of 
the  nation,  except  as  there  are  subjects  of  the 
Central  or  Imperial  Government. 

No  man  here  had  been  subject  of  some  one 
State.  The  inhabitant  was  always  the  sub- 
ject of  States — being  in  union,  thirteen  first, 
more  afterwards ;  a  political  fact  known  to  the 
world.  Because  sovereignty,  the  opposite  of 
subjection,  was  held  by  States  only  as  union. 
Subjection  always  has  been  national.  If  there 
has  been  a  change,  subjection  is  now  claimable 
only  by  the  President,  Congress,  and  Judiciary 
for  the  time  being. 

The  only  possible  continuation  for  citizen- 
ship, as  right  not  dependent  on  the  Central 
Government,  was  by  the  continued  existence 
of  some  States,  not  dependent  on  that  Gov- 
ernment, but  on  their  own  mutual  recognition 
as  continuing  in  the  voluntary  political  union. 
Citizenship,  under  this  condition,  was  derived 


136  The  Centennial 

from  a  definite  sovereign,  distinct  from  all 
agents  of  government.  When  State  existence 
and  citizenship  in  the  State  may  depend  on 
the  Central  Government,  national  citizenship, 
as  legal  right,  would  not  depend  on  the  will  of 
any  people  or  Nation ;  or,  only  as  there  is 
always  a  possibility  of  revolution,  by  the  force 
of  a  majority  or  minority. 

Thus  we  ourselves  continue  the  century  of 
a  revolution,  by  affirming,  openly  now,  that 
sovereignty  of  the  Nation  and  revolution  are 
identical.  This  was  Tom  Jefferson's  doctrine  ; 
as  it  has  been  French  practice  since  the  revo- 
lution which  he  witnessed. 

But  this  Government,  you  may  say,  is,  after 
all,  only  an  elective  government.  As  it  is 
periodically  renewable  and  renewed  by  elec- 
tion, it  cannot  be  called  a  personal  govern- 
ment. It  would  be  impossible  for  those  in 
office,  at  any  time,  to  continue  themselves  as 
officers  of  government  by  continuing  to  use 
the  powers  exercised  before ;  or  to  govern,  as  a 
monarchy  or  an  oligarchy  does,  by  simple  con- 
tinuation in  a  preconceived  line  of  succession. 
How  can  this  Government,  while  its  personnel 
is  elected,  continue  itself  as  against  the  States 


of  a  Revolution.  137 

or  against  anybody  else  ;  as  monarchs  or  oli- 
garchs may  have  done  as  against  the  mass  of 
the  nation  ;  even  if  it  should  have  that  control 
over  the  electoral  bodies  which  has  been  in- 
dicated by  sceptical  criticism  as  essential  in 
the  prospective  development  of  the  revolu- 
tionary adoption  ? 

Well  then,  how  do  monarchs  and  oligarchs 
manage  to  do  it  ?  No  one  thinks  of  the  most 
absolute  potentate  as  possessing,  literally, 
that  is  in  his  own  brawn  and  muscle,  the 
power  which  he  directs  ;  seemingly  of  his  own 
will.  A  single  human  being,  a  Caesar  or  a 
Charlemagne,  a  Bourbon,  or  a  Bonaparte,  holds 
sway  only  because  some  indefinite  number  of 
persons,  a  minority,  usually,  in  proportion  to 
all  under  his  rule,  believe  that  his  possession 
of  political  power  is,  more  or  less  certainly, 
for  their  own  personal  benefit.  There  is  a 
continuing  collection  of  partisans  of  some  sort 
which  makes  the  possibility  of  any  absolute 
ruler. 

The  same  holds  for  elective  governments. 
While  their  personnel  must  experience  change 
by  periodical  dissolution  and  reintegration,  a 
distinct  body  of  electors  will  continue  by  natu- 


138  The  Centennial 

ral  substitution.  The  theory  of  all  elective 
systems  involves  personal  preferences  of  some 
sort,  for  candidates,  aside  from  party  divisions. 
But  all  political  history  indicates  Parties  as 
inevitable  under  all  forms  of  popular  govern- 
ment. No  one  sees  parties  distinguished  solely 
by  personal  preferences  or  mere  favor  or  dis- 
favor for  measures,  as  expedient  or  otherwise. 
We  see  in  all  trans-Atlantic  states  parties 
antagonized  by  different  faiths  as  to  the  loca- 
tion of  that  supreme  power  which  all  profess 
to  recognize  when  this  location  is  ascertained, 
and  it  is  easy  to  conceive  how,  in  republics,  a 
party  may  arise  which  claims  the  possession 
of  power  as  its  right ;  a  right  which  it  is  its 
first  duty  to  defend. 

The  generations  which  have  preceded  our 
own  in  the  century  past  were  nursed  in  the 
belief  that  the  republics  of  the  future  would 
never  know  a  party  rivalship  based  on  such  a 
claim  ;  and  this  was  because  they  supposed 
that,  here,  a  paper  constitution  would  hold  the 
place  of  crown  and  sceptre — in  the  name  of 
a  sovereign  people.  Whether  anything  has 
happened  since  J.  Q.  Adams'  Jubilee  oration 
to  make   this  questionable,  or  has  not,  we  can 


of  a  Revolution,  139 

see  by  the  broader  glare  of  our  hundred-year- 
old  revolution  that,  here,  a  party  must  take 
the  place  of  that  class  of  persons,  which,  in  so- 
called  autocratic  countries,  sustains  the  mon- 
arch or  oligarchy,  and  that  it  will  itself  become 
our  sovereign  and  master. 

If  among  all  parties  there  is  one  only  which 
affirms  the  sovereignty  of  the  Central  Govern- 
ment— as  founded  on  our  legend  of  the  cent- 
ury-old revolution-Government,  born  in  the 
adoption  of  the  constitution  in  1787— that  is 
the  party  which  should  alone  subsist,  which 
alone  can  claim  allegiance.  As  such  it  may 
continue,  like  a  dynasty,  and,  as  such,  its  duty 
to  itself  and  its  right  against  others  is  to  main- 
tain itself  for  the  support  of  that  Government 
as  sovereign. 

While  the  revolution  of  1787  was  unrecog- 
nized, the  States  seemed  continuing  organiza- 
tions ;  entities  visibly  holding,  in  union  only 
and  not  severally,  all  sovereign  powers ;  that 
is,  both  those  exercised  by  their  central  organ 
and  those  exercised  by  their  several  organs  of 
local  government.  When  they  may  have 
been  confined  to  administrative  or  police  func- 
tions merely,  under  the  Central   Government, 


1 40  The  Centennial 

or  have  become  geographical  groups  of  com- 
munes, under  a  national  statute  guaranteeing 
"republicanism,"  according  to  the  French 
ideal  of  political  liberty  in  the  despotism  of  a 
sovereign  people,  it  will  be  inevitable  that  the 
party  controlling  that  Central  Government 
will  have  become  the  actual  sovereign. 

We  may  say  :  Parties  have  always  existed 
here.  It  is  necessary  to  the  elective  system 
that  administration  should  be  in  the  hands  of 
the  strongest  party  and  yet  no  party  here  has 
had  exclusive  possession  of  administration. 
True  ;  and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  hith- 
erto, this  power  could  not  be  entirely  in  the 
hands  of  one  organ,  or  of  a  number  of  organs 
acting  subordinately  to  some  one  central 
superior.  But  this  has  been  owing  entirely  to 
the  prolonged  existence  of  those  "  relics  of 
usurpation" — the  States — lingering  stumbling- 
blocks  in  the  path  of  the  Revolution  begun  by 
adoption.  It  is  to  be  supposed  that  the  party 
having  the  preponderance  in  the  Central  Gov- 
ernment would  also  be  the  stronger  in  the 
States  having  the  larger  part  of  the  popula- 
tion. But,  hitherto,  no  one  of  the  several 
parties  which  have  existed  has,  at  any  time, 


of  a  Revolution.  141 

had  majority-control  of  the  Central  and  also 
of  every  State  Government ;  and,  for  this 
reason,  the  entire  exclusion  of  minorities  from 
the  personnel  of  the  Central  Government  has 
been  impossible. 

When  the  faith,  which  is  to  follow  aroused 
"scepticism  in  politics,"  shall  have  had  its 
perfect  work  and  a  party  shall  be  found  whose 
first  principle  is  that  the  Central  Government 
has,  at  last,  in  our  continuing  Revolution, 
become  the  only  representative  of  sovereignty, 
it  will  be  inevitable  that  such  party  should 
claim  the  right  to  determine  the  personnel 
of  that  Government  against  all  and  every 
other  whose  belief  may  conflict  with  its  own 
political  faith.  Its  duty  towards  such  gov- 
ernment will  be  its  right  to  maintain  itself 
in  possession  as  against  such  others ;  a  right 
to  maintain  the  government  as  its  own  instru- 
ment or  organ  ;  without  regard  to  its  being  in 
minority  or  majority ;  because  all  who  may 
not  equally  attribute  sovereignty  to  that  gov- 
ernment will  be  in  the  position,  essentially,  of 
rebels  and  traitors.  Even  if  some  such  other 
party  should,  by  numbers  and  the  vulgar  pre- 
possession   for   constitutional    formalities,    ac- 


142  The  Centennial 

quire  a  preponderance,  its  occupation  of  the 
Central  Government  should  be  regarded  as 
only  a  temporary  interregnum — a  passing  re- 
action of  the  forces  mingling  in  the  revolu- 
tionary tide.  It  may  sometimes  be  good 
policy  in  such  periods  not  to  press  the  claim 
of  party  legitimacy  too  far  or  too  fast.  There 
may  be  cases — perhaps  there  was  an  example 
when  Tilden  was  not  inaugurated — when  visit- 
ing statesmen  can  manoeuvre  to  prevent  a 
party's  lapse  from  power.  In  other  cases  of 
close  election,  such  ingenuity  may  have  been 
equally  desirable,  but  not  so  prudently  at- 
tempted. 

But  we  shall  not  falter  in  our  faith  in  this 
Revolution  and  its  onward  movements.  We 
have  learned  from  our  College  what  is  the 
approaching  fate  of  those  "  three  things " 
which  stand  in  the  way  of  "  complete  relega- 
tion "  of  the  States  to  their  subordinate  posi- 
tion in  respect  to  "  the  Nation's  organs  of 
central  government." 

"  They  are  all  relics  of  the  usurpation  of 
1 78 1.  Whatever  show  of  reason  existed  for 
any  of  them  has  largely  passed  away,  and  is 
now  on  the  point  of  totally  disappearing ;  and 


ft 

of  a  Revolution.  143 

when  the  people  come  clearly  to  see  that  this 
intermeddling  with  the  politics  of  the  Nation 
is  what  prevents  the  commonwealths  from 
properly  discharging  their  proper  functions  in 
jural  and  police  administration,  the  spirit  will 
hardly  be  lacking  to  proceed  to  the  transfor- 
mation. For  ten  years  now  we  have  been 
passing  through  a  period  of  reaction  against 
the  pronounced  nationalism  of  the  previous 
fifteen  ;  but  we  shall  come  to  the  end  of  it, 
and  the  precedents  are  not  wanting  in  our 
history  to  point  the  way  for  the  still  further 
nationalization  of  our  political  institutions."* 

We  listened  a  while  ago,  to  the  suggestion 
from  a  prominent  weekly  as  to  the  recogni- 
tion which  constitutional  changes  in  1865-7 
should  have  received  at  our  centennial  cele- 
bration last  September.  This  suggestion 
seemed  to  show  a  glimmering  appreciation  of 
our  revolutionary  progression.  Yet  this  same 
serene  hebdomadal  has  remarked,  a  propos  of 
some  recent  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court. — 

"  It  was  ignorantly  taken  for  granted  that  a 
Republican    Supreme    Court    had    all     these 

*  p.  s.  Q.,  I.,  24, 25 


i44  The  Centennial 

years  been  interpreting  the  Constitution  in  a 
way  that  favored  the  latitudinarian  views  of 
those  politicians  who  for  partisan  ends  have 
sought  to  aggrandize  the  powers  of  the 
Federal  Government."* 

Well,  it  would  not  be  very  strange  if  some 
of  us  should  lean  to  latitudinarianism  after  a 
century  of  Revolution.  "  Partisan  ends  !  " 
Shall  colleges  and  professors  of  political 
science  and  irresistible  idea  be  shunted  off 
with  the  lobby  and  rings  and  hunters  of 
boodle  in  the  communes?  "  Ignorantly  taken 
for  granted  " — Is  this  recognition  for  historical 
discovery  and  ethnical  prognostication  ? 

The  editorial  proceeds  to  proof  by  calling 
up  Mr.  Justice  Miller  as  having — 

"  In  his  notable  address  upon  the  Supreme 
Court  before  the  alumni  of  Michigan  Univer- 
sity, last  summer,  summed  up  the  case,  when 
he  said  :  '  It  may  be  considered  now  as  set- 
tled that,  with  the  exception  of  these  specific 
provisions  in  them  [the  Amendments]  for  the 
protection  of  the  personal  rights  of  the  citi- 
zens and  people  of  the  United  States,  and  the 

*   The  Nation ;  Dec.  8,  1887,  article,  State  Rights. 


of  a  Revolution.  145 

necessary  restrictions  upon  the  powers  of  the 
States  for  that  purpose,  with  the  additions  to 
the  power  of  the  General  Government  to  en- 
force those  provisions,  no  substantial  change 
has  been  made.  The  necessity  of  the  great 
powers  conceded  by  the  constitution  origi- 
nally to  the  Federal  Government  and  the 
equal  necessity  of  the  autonomy  of  the  States 
and  their  power  to  regulate  their  domestic 
affairs  remain  as  the  great  features  of  our  com- 
plex form  of  government/  " 

Just  so.  The  Supreme  Court  says  that  it 
considers  just  this  sort  of  thing  quite  proper, 
just  at  present,  or  quite  necessary.  But  sup- 
pose the  court  feels  differently,  some  day. 
There  is  no  recognition  here  of  the  States  as 
having  an  iota  of  power  by  right  above  law  : 
and  the  whole  question  is  of  that  sort  of  right ; 
which  is  one  that  no  court  of  law  can  deter- 
mine. 

"  Complex  form  of  government  " — so  it  may 
seem  to  those  who  cannot  accommodate  their 
consciences  to  the  revolution  legend — the  rev- 
olution of  centennial  adoption.  Their  opinions 
on  the  matter  of  our  political  obligations  are 
far  more  obfuscated  than  were  those  of  the 
10 


146  The  Centennial 

foreigners  who  charged  the  Northern  States 
with  being  false  to  their  own  axioms,  in  not 
acquiescing  in  Southern  Secession.  They,  the 
foreigners,  could  see  that  a  genesis  by  legality 
for  a  political  constitution  is  not  possible. 
Force,  revolutionary  or  otherwise,  must  be 
found  to  support  it.  Our  own  Quarterly 
says  *  in  another  article  by  the  same  writer  : — 
"  It  seems  to  me,  then,  that  an  exact  political 
science  would  lead  us  to  abandon  any  attempt 
to  find  a  legal  justification  for  the  manner  in 
which  the  constitution  of  1787  was  established. 
We  should  accept  fairly  and  fully  the  proposi- 
tion that  the  constitution  of  1787  rested  origi- 
nally upon  a  revolutionary  basis,  and  justify 
the  fact  upon  the  principle  of  public  neces- 
sity." 

And  that  is  as  near  the  true  statement  as 
any  one  can  give  it :  except  that  revolutions 
are  a  class  of  facts  that  require  no  justification- 
certificate  from  anybody,  or  from  any  science 
or  system  of  any  kind.  When  a  man  begins 
to  talk  of  a  revolution's  having  been  necessary, 
good,  desirable,  or  "  such   as  political  science 


P.  S.  Q.,  I.,  p.  619,  article  on  Von  Hoist's  "  Public  Law." 


of  a  Revolution.  147 

would  indicate  "*  as  establishing  that  there 
was  or  was  not  a  revolution,  he  stultifies 
himself  by  assuming  to  judge  of  the  exist- 
ence of  that  which  he  has  already  asserted 
as  existing.  The  same  sort  of  thing  is  done 
in  saying  that  the  thirteen  States,  were  indi- 
vidually sovereign  before  17%7—by  usurpation. 
A  revolution  is  a  fact  by  its  nature  ;  as  dis- 
tinct from  legislation.  But  both  are  conse- 
quences of  some  human  will.  To  say,  in 
affirming  a  political  change  following  civil 
war,  that  "  war  legislates,"  marks  the  vaporous 
idealist.  Fact,  not  doctrine,  nor  idea,  is  the 
foundation  of  all  political  existence.  So,  if 
before  the  adoption  the  thirteen  States  were 
thirteen  separately  sovereign  nations,  it  was  so 
by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  so  it  was.  Or,  if 
thirteen  States  or  less  than  thirteen  did,  at 
the  time  of  this  adoption,  or  if  more  than  thir- 
teen did,  during  the  civil  war,  possess,  to- 
gether, and  not  severally,  the  powers  of  an 
independent  nation,  such  was  the  fact — with- 
out constitution  for  it,  or  law  for  it,  or  contract 
under  law   for  it,  or  reason  for  it,  or  political 

t  P.  s.  Q.,  I.,  p.  620. 


148  The  Centennial 

science  for  it,  or  consent  of  anybody  but  them- 
selves, as  States  existing  in  political  union,  for 
it.  But  lawyers  and  judges,  as  is  their  nature, 
will  fancy,  with  Mr.  Justice  Miller,  that  they 
can  find  law  for  the  existence  of  the  law-giver. 

Revolutions  have  been  likened  to  volcanic 
eruptions.  On  Vesuvius  they  have  what  they 
call  an  observatory  :  not  to  watch  stars,  but 
the  volcano  :  to  note  the  glowing  crater,  the 
rumblings,  the  brimstone  vapor  and,  above  all, 
the  shakings  of  the  mountain.  For  this  they 
have  what  they  call  a  seismograph — earth- 
quake-recorder. Our  Supreme  Court  at  the 
Capitol,  seated  between  the  Senate  Chamber 
and  Hall  of  Representatives,  may  be  like  a 
seismograph  between  two  craters  of  a  volcano 
always  more  or  less  eruptive.  It  can  record 
the  earthquake  and  perhaps  give  warning  of 
the  lava-flow.  If  it  will  be  part  of  a  revolu- 
tionary sovereign  government,  it  must  be 
more  than  a  court  of  law  in  the  true  sense 
of  that  word,  and  may  learn  in  time  that  there 
is  no  law  to  give  or  withhold  sovereignty. 

What  does  Senator  Hawley  know  about 
adoption  when  he  assumes  to  say  that  "  the 
tendency  towards  consolidation  of    the  entire 


of  a  Revolution.  149 

powers  of  the  government  is  one  of  the  strong- 
est to-day  and  one  of  those  most  dangerous  to 
the  republican  experiment  as  our  fathers  un- 
derstood it?"  The  fact  being,  however,  that 
we,  a  hundred  years  later,  understand  our  fa- 
thers' understanding  a  great  deal  better  than 
they  understood  it  themselves. 

We  who  know  that  our  citizenship  has  be- 
come subjection,  and  who  know  it  because  we 
know  where  to  find  our  sovereign,  are  clear  on 
this  point  of  our  obligations.  We  who  recog- 
nize the  revolutionary  basis  of  the  supreme 
Central  Government  shall  of  necessity  present 
ourselves,  collectively,  as  the  Legitimist  Party, 
to  which,  individually,  we  shall  give  our  alle- 
giance, independently  of  men  or  measures.  If 
any  ask  how  our  party  can  be  recognized  and 
distinguished  from  others,  when  perhaps  we 
may  not,  as  a  party,  have  complete  control  of 
all  government,  central  as  well  as  local,  we 
shall  claim  identification,  historically,  with 
those  whose  fortune  it  was  to  have  principally 
directed  the  Government  during  the  civil  war 
and  the  Reconstruction  era :  assuming,  from 
the  arguments  of  the  leaders,  at  that  time, 
that  they  did  this  on  the  principle  of  devotion 


i5° 


The  Centennial 


to  a  supreme  or  sovereign  government,  then 
recognized  by  them  as  superior  to  all  States 
North  or  South,  united  or  disunited,  and 
therein  making  the  position  of  that  govern- 
ment, during  the  war,  intelligible  and  politi- 
cally consistent  : — intelligible  and  consistent 
in  itself,  but  especially  as  compared  with  its 
position  under  any  other  explanation  of  our 
political  institutions  which  had  ever  been  set 
up  by  any  other  party  proposing  to  support 
the  government  in  that  crisis,  while  still  ad- 
hering to  the  historical  doctrine,  or  assump- 
tion, of  an  originally  separate  sovereignty  in 
the  several  States. 

This  party  it  is  which,  from  its  record  in 
that  crisis  and  with  the  new  discovery  of  its 
basis  in  old  revolution,  can  claim  the  titles  of 
The  Great  and  Historical  Party,  as  compared 
with  others,  old  or  new,  and  which  now  takes 
its  stand  as  Legitimist,  by  the  right  of  the 
Central  Government  to  claim  personal  allegi- 
ance, as  being  a  personal  government,  now 
seen  to  have  rested  one  hundred  years — not 
on  social  compact,  federal  compact  or  any 
such  fiction  of  fetish-constitution-mongers,  but 
on  fact,  historical  fact — the  Revolution  in  the 


of  a  Revolution.  1 5 1 

adoption  of  the  written  Constitution  of  1787. 
Here  then,  at  last,  Americans  can  find  a 
party  with  a  principle  which  is  perennial — a 
principle  which  can  be  distinguished  from  fol- 
lowing men  or  pursuing  measures;  a  princi- 
ple which  is  loyalty — not  to  a  form  of  words,  a 
statute,  a  paper  constitution,  nor  to  a  form  of 
government — but  loyalty  to  persons,  that  is, 
to  the  party  itself.  For  we  see  that,  in  order 
to  recognize  in  the  Central  Government  a  per- 
sonal sovereign,  and  to  support  it  as  such,  the 
party  must  affirm  its  own  personal  right  to 
create  that  government.  In  the  nature  of 
such  a  party  this  loyalty  is  its  only  principle, 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  To  this,  meas- 
ures are  means,  not  ends.  By  this,  men's 
qualifications  and  characters  as  candidates  for 
office  are  to  be  estimated ;  or  rather,  we 
should  say,  their  qualifications  and  characters 
need  not  be  estimated  at  all.  To  be  the  can- 
didate of  the  party  is  character  and  qualifica- 
tion. 

So,  in  behalf  of  such  a  party,  it  could  well 
be  said  by  an  orator  : — "  The  general  judgment 
of  the  American  people  is  that  you  must  vote 
for  your  principles,  and   for  those  who  agree 


152  The   Centennial 

with  you  in  principle";  and  by  an  organ  of  its 
policy: — "Any  citizen,  even  the  most  intelli- 
gent, may  be  deceived  in  regard  to  the  charac- 
ter of  a  candidate.  Just  as  the  shrewdest 
business  men  are  constantly  suffering  from 
misplaced  confidence  in  adroit  scamps,  so  that 
the  plausible  demagogue  finds  a  new  crop  of 
deluded  victims  every  season.  But  the  plain 
citizen  need  never  be  deceived  if  he  inquire 
honestly  regarding  the  beliefs  and  tendencies 
of  a  great  historical  party.  He  can  know 
with  absolute  certainty  in  what  directions  its 
power  will  be  exerted." 

And  right  you  are,  this  time,  dear  old  Tri- 
bune!  While  the  beautifulest  of  it  all  is  that 
other  contestants  for  power  fancy  that  they 
can  get  on  without  any  such  faith  in  them- 
selves as  sovereign — that  is,  without  claiming 
loyalty  for  themselves,  as  party  having  a  di- 
vine right  to  rule — because  they  have  never 
been  able  to  find  a  personal  sovereign  any- 
where. 

Such  other  possible  parties  are  obliged  to 
profess  that  the  only  issues  in  practical  politics 
are  as  to  measures  of  administration  ;  or,  that 
such  measures  are  to  be  judged  by  considera- 


of  a  Revolution*  153 

tions  of  utility  and  legal  constitutionality ; 
without  reference  to  knowledge  of  any  intrin- 
sic relation  of  superiority  and  inferiority  held 
by  the  Central  Government  and  the  States 
reciprocally.  So  it  has  always  been  with 
them.  And,  therefore,  these  other  parties 
never  could  give  an  explanation,  when  they 
affirmed  the  duty  of  the  citizen  to  support  the 
Central  Government  in  a  crisis  like  that  of 
1 86 1 — 5  ;  that  is,  none  comparable  for  logical 
consistency  with  that  which  we  now  base  on 
the  discovery  of  actual  revolution  in  the  adop- 
tion of  1787  ;  whereby  that  sovereignty  came 
to  an  end,  which  all  parties  used  to  assume 
had  belonged  to  each  State  of  the  thirteen,  in 
severalty. 

From  their  failure  to  recognize  this  revolu- 
tion, these  other  parties  have  been  forced,  at 
all  times  since  the  adoption,  to  appear  as  sup- 
porters of  that  doctrine  of  State-sovereignty 
which  all  the  outside  world  regarded  as  prov- 
ing that  the  adoption  was  no  more  than  an  act 
of  confederation  between  sovereigns ;  and  as 
justifying  the  claims  of  the  Southern  Confed- 
eracy to  international  recognition  on  their 
secession ;  and  which  would  of  itself  have  se- 


1 54  The  Centennial 

cured  that  recognition,  if  there  had  been  no 
question  of  moral  sympathy  or  repugnance 
with  slavery ;  and  which,  as  it  is,  has  made  the 
Northern  charge  of  treason  on  the  part  of  the 
Confederacy,  or  its  citizens,  seem  to  all  the 
world  an  absurdity. 

In  this  imbecility  of  every  other  party  lies 
the  present  strength  of  our  grand  old  party  of 
historic  legitimacy,  begun  in  Revolution.  For 
even  when  not  holding  such  thorough  control 
of  the  Central  Government  as  it  had  from  i860 
to  a  recent  period,  the  party  can  secure  sup- 
port from  the  forces  of  its  purblind  adversa- 
ries for  measures  which  it  would  naturally  pro- 
mote in  supporting  its  own  views  of  centrali- 
zation, and  which,  therefore,  must  facilitate  its 
own  return  to  power,  and  secure  its  possession 
in  the  future. 

The  dullest  can  see  that,  as  precedent  to 
be  used  in  some  later  affirmation  of  our 
own  Legitimist  position,  when  the  time  comes, 
it  is  as  useful,  or  even  better,  that  another 
party,  having  temporary  preponderance  in  the 
Central  Government,  should,  for  its  own  parti- 
san ends,  have  interfered  in  State  elections 
and  blindly  deserted  its  own  traditions.     Be- 


of  a  Revolution. 


DS 


sides,  as  long  as  any  other  parties,  not  accept- 
ing our  legitimist  doctrine,  are  possible,  it  will 
be  politically  expedient  for  us  to  endure  the 
customary  survival  of  those  "  relics  of  usurpa- 
tion " — the  States  ;  being  careful,  however,  to 
ignore  any  pretension  to  their  individual  or 
collective  possession  of  original  power  and  to 
avoid  any  language  warranting  an  inference 
that  they  had  held  reserved  powers,  or  that  the 
powers  which  have  been  or  may  be  exercised 
by  the  Central  Government  had  ever  been 
granted  or  delegated  to  it  as  agent,  instead  of 
having  been  assumed,  among  the  whole  sum 
of  sovereign  powers,  by  right  above  law,  be- 
cause founded  on  Revolution.  Thus,  once  on 
a  time,  in  years  before  its  days  of  grandeur, 
our  great  historical  party  in  convention  in  i860, 
could  say — 

"Resolved,  That  the  maintenance  inviolate 
of  the  rights  of  the  States,  and  especially  the 
right  of  each  State  to  order  and  control  its 
own  domestic  institutions  according  to  its  own 
judgment,  exclusively,  is  essential  to  that  bal- 
ance of  power  on  which  the  perfection  and  en- 
durance of  our  political  fabric  depends." 

What   was   there    in    this    to    limit    future 


156  The   Centennial 

action  ?  This  being,  at  the  most,  the  party's 
approval  of  whatever  it  might  at  any  time 
deem  "  essential  "  to  the  perfection  and  endur- 
ance of  our  political  fabric.  There  was  here 
no  recognition  of  political  rights  in  the  sense 
of  political  powers.  When  the  day  of  party- 
power  came,  the  essence  of  our  political  fabric 
was  found  to  lie  all  in  the  existence  of  a  Cen- 
tral Government,  alone  representing  the  sum 
and  substance  of  all  independent  political 
dominion. 

All  this  goody-goody  talk  can  be  repeated 
at  any  time.  It  is  much  like  the  Supreme 
Court's  informing*  us  that  "  under  the  pres- 
sure of  all  the  excited  feeling  growing  out  of 
the  war,  our  statesmen  have  still  believed  that 
the  existence  of  the  States  with  powers  for 
domestic  and  local  government  ....  was  es- 
sential to  the  perfect  working  of  our  complex 
form  of  government,  though  they  [our  states- 
men— mind  you  !]  have  thought  proper  to  im- 
pose additional  limitations  upon  the  States, 
and  to  confer  additional  powers  on  that  of  the 

*  Quoted  in  Mr.  Justice  Miller's  Michigan  University  Ad- 
dress from  the  opinion  in  the  Slaughter-House  Cases. 


of  a  Revolution.  157 

United  States.  But  whatever  fluctuations 
may  be  seen  in  the  history  of  public  opinion 
on  this  subject,  during  the  period  of  our  na- 
tional existence,  we  think  it  will  be  found 
that  this  court,  so  far  as  its  functions  required, 
has  always  held  with  a  steady  and  an  even 
hand  the  balance  between  State  and  Federal 
power,  and  we  trust  that  such  may  continue  to 
be  the  history  of  its  relation  to  that  subject 
so  long  as  it  shall  have  duties  to  perform 
which  demand  of  it  a  construction  of  the  con- 
stitution, or  of  any  of  its  parts." 

If  the  court,  or  "  our  statesmen,"  or  any- 
body else,  has  engaged  to  consider  always  the 
best  interests  of  the  States  and  allow  them  as 
much  self-government  as  is  for  the  good 
of  people  in  general — everybody  is  greatly 
obliged  to  them  for  their  benevolent  designs. 
But  when  we  once  have  comprehended  that 
this  subjection  of  ours  rests  on  a  Revolution  be- 
gun a  century  ago  by  "  the  natural  leaders  of 
the  Nation,"  though  hardly  yet  perfected, 
even  by  "the  men  of  1861-7,"  or  "our  states- 
men," as  the  court  puts  it,  who  improved  on 
the  work  of  the  men  of  1787,  we  know  where 
we  are  and  can  accept  the  situation. 


158  The  Centennial 

With  this  conception  of  loyalty  we  may 
always  promote  any  single  measures,  by  whom- 
soever proposed,  which  make  our  States  or 
"commonwealths"  recipients  of  the  Central 
Government's  indulgence  or  assistance :  just 
as  provinces,  cities  or  communes  are  proper 
subjects  of  favorable  or  unfavorable  attentions 
under  more  fully  centralized  sovereignties. 
Surplus  revenue  can  be  distributed  here  and 
there,  like  candy  to  children  at  Christmas — 
to  keep  them  or  make  them  good.  Works  of 
internal  improvement  will  suggest  themselves, 
as  convenient  in  making  just  discrimination 
among  localities  ;  or  bounties  to  make  the  in- 
dustries of  some  districts  appear  profitable. 

And  in  this  connection,  we  shall  all  see  the 
extreme  propriety  in  providing  the  Govern- 
ment with  an  overflowing  treasury  ;  far  above 
the  insignificant  savings  from  an  income  which 
the  revolutionary  adopters  of  a  century  ago 
imagined  sufficient  for  a  government  "  to  pro- 
vide for  the  common  defence,  promote  the 
general  welfare  and  secure  the  blessings  of 
liberty."  In  fact,  a  continuing  war-revenue- 
standard  should  be  enthusiastically  advocated  ; 
in  view  of  the  fact  that   our   Legitimist   party 


of  a  Revolution.  159 

has  always  boasted  that,  with  its  support,  the 
Central  Government  had,  as  sovereign,  main- 
tained itself  by  war  ;  and  we  may  naturally 
expect  to  use  methods  equally  costly  in  dol- 
lars, if  not  in  lives,  to  sustain  its  existence  in 
the  future. 

It  is  clear  too  that  it  will  be  conducive  to 
the  same  ends  to  favor,  incidentally,  the  activi- 
ties of  persons  who,  being  directly  enriched 
by  receiving,  as  a  class,  protection  through  the 
operation  of  an  indirectly  raised  revenue,  will 
continue  to  look  for  it  to  the  Central  Govern- 
ment ;  and  who,  having  benefited  by  this 
means  at  the  expense  of  other  subjects  of  that 
Government,  may  be  expected  to  aid  in  sus- 
taining by  their  wealth  the  Legitimist  princi- 
ple of  loyalty,  since  such  protection  could 
never  be  afforded  by  any  of  the  local  govern- 
ments ;  however  willing  they  might  be,  to 
say  nothing  of  those  States  whose  resources 
might  be  impaired  by  such  methods  of  promot- 
ing the  general  welfare. 

Similar  considerations  will  indicate  that  for 
some  time  to  come  a  passive  policy,  in 
some  directions,  may  also  be  advantageous, 
whether    our   actual    party-preponderance    be 


160  The  Centennial 

immediate  or  only  prospective.  Some  politi- 
cal experiments  which  would  appear  eminently 
proper  in  view  of  identifying  the  Central  Gov- 
ernment with  the  entire  People,  as  sovereign, 
may  well^be  kept  in  abeyance.  For  example, 
the  anomaly  in  the  existence  of  five  adjoining 
States  in  the  eastern  portion,  together  not 
equal  in  territory  to  one  of  several  others, 
with  their  disproportionate  representation  in 
the  Senate,  may  remain  unnoticed,  as  long  as 
the  industries  of  their  inhabitants  would 
marshal  them  among  the  supporters  of  our 
party  of  Legitimacy  and  swell  majorities  to 
sustain  the  financial  methods  it  advocates. 

Besides,  are  we  not  in  honor  bound  to  re- 
spect localities  whose  intellectual  activity  has 
so  manipulated  the  biographies  of  our  fore- 
fathers as  to  disclose  the  historical  foundation 
of  our  sovereign  Central  Government  ?  It  is 
mainly  due  to  the  literary  activity  of  our  Doc- 
trinaircSy  in  this  little  group  of  States  and  in 
their  Western  affiliations,  that  we,  as  a  party, 
have  learned  how  to  assert  our  Legitimist 
position — sovereign  by  the  Grace  of  God,  by 
the  necessity  of  things,  by  Revolution.  Who 
else  can  pretend   to   retain  a  disproportion   of 


of  a  Revolution.  161 

political  power  in  State  existence,  if  not  those 
who,  by  heredity,  can  claim  that  their  concep- 
tion of  right  and  wrong  must  be  received  as 
law  by  every  one  else  ? 

In  such  recognition  of  intellectual  pre-emi- 
nence in  a  small  portion  of  our  wide  dominion, 
we  may  also  show  our  appreciation  of  all  the 
men  of  learning  who  are  now  crowding  along 
from  East  and  West  to  aid  our  College  in  up- 
holding the  dynastic  idea  founded  on  the  dis- 
covered Revolution.  All  ordinary  party  strat- 
egy is  indeed  nothing  comparable  to  our  mak- 
ing friends  with  the  literary  fellows — genus 
irritabile  though  they  be. 

It  has  been  the  folly  and  weakness  of  other 
parties  that  they  have  taken  small  account  of 
"  culture  "  and  never  understood  what  a  few 
despised  scribblers  have  often  done  in  shaping 
the  world's  destiny.  Their  simple  state-craft 
mocks  at  nationalism — cooked  up  by  study  of 
physical  geography  and  ethnical  affinities,  and 
at  discrimination  of  sovereign  peoples  by  lin- 
guistic traditions  beginning  with  the  tower  of 
Babel.  As  to  history,  they  are  ready  enough 
to  say — ''Let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead," 
but  never  seeing  that  there  is  no  reality  in  the 
ii 


1 62  The  Centennial 

things  of  the  present  except  as  they  continue 
the  things  of  the  past.  The  best  they  can  do, 
in  the  way  of  political  dogma,  is  to  repeat 
with  the  Supreme  Court  the  meaningless 
apothegm — "  an  indestructible  union  of  inde- 
structible and  immutable  States  " — to  their 
own  confusion. 

Let  them  ridicule  our  Professors  for  emulat- 
ing French  Doctrinaires,  like  Lamartine,  in 
political  sentimentalism,  and  for  preaching  the 
positive  philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  as  re- 
ligion and  law  in  one,  and  proclaiming  at  once 
the  war  of  ideas  and  the  gospel  of  humanity. 
Not  having  any  such  school  of  the  prophets 
to  mould  and  polish  their  political  vagaries 
into  a  presentable  form,  their  managers  are 
obliged  to  put  their  trust  in  slang-wanging 
editorials,  caucus,  bar-room  politicians,  tough 
boys,  ballot-stuffings,  jobs  for  the  boodle  and 
in  "  tricks  that  are  vain." 

To  those  who  know  how  the  world  is  moved 
by  thought,  Education  is  a  word  of  power. 
To  us,  who  propose  that  the  thought  which 
is  to  move  others  shall  be  of  our  own  thinking, 
Education  is  as  a  talisman  in  the  hand  of  the 
adept.     It  is  the  boast  of  modern  Prussia  that 


of  a  Revolution.  163 

the  school-master  has  done  more  than  the  re- 
cruiting sergeant  of  great  Fritz's  time  towards 
giving  her  the  hegemony  of  Germany.  All 
the  older  dynasties  have  learned  that,  with 
education  in  their  hands,  they  can  well  afford 
to  profess  subjection  to  public  opinion. 

Educatio?i  !  And  what  is  Civil  Service  Re- 
form, when  regarded  in  relation  to  such  a 
party  as  ours,  but  a  branch  of  education?  For 
this  service  a  Central  Government  requires 
educated  men.  Education  is  a  grand  thing ; 
for  is  it  not  a  grand  thing  to  be  educated  ? 
Educated,  above  all,  in  knowing  who  it  is  one 
must  obey,  in  the  last  resort,  as  sovereign. 
The  country  needs  above  all,  men  who  know 
and  can  show  this,  and  this  can  only  be  known 
and  shown  by  education — education  in  loyalty. 
We  are  under  deep  obligations  to  isolated  pro- 
fessors \\\  so  many  colleges  and  universities  for 
these  discoveries  in  our  history  which  lay  a 
solid  foundation  for  our  supremacy.  These 
discoveries  should  be  secured  by  means  of  one 
grand  national  instrument  of  education.  We 
should  profit  by  the  examples  of  France  and 
Germany  ;  and  have  every  school  in  the  land 
subordinated    to   a    central    university,   main- 


164  The  Centennial 

tained  from  the  superabundant  means  given 
by  an  overflowing  treasury  in  our  hands.  And 
why  should  not  we  too  have  things  orna- 
mental, but  also  useful  as  exciting  literary  em- 
ulation, like  the  Royal  Society — F.R.S.  gentle- 
men ;  Members  of  the  Institilt,  of  the  Academie 
Franqaise^  etc.,  to  gather  about  us  a  body  of 
decorated  supporters  of  our  Central  Govern- 
ment? 

Indeed  what  a  grand  thing  it  would  be  to 
have  a  government  carried  on  throughout  by 
literary  men — of  the  right  sort,  of  course ! 
Did  not  Lowell — one  of  our  best  known  liter- 
ary men — only  the  other  day,  quote  before  us, 
Bacon,  as  "  a  man  versed  both  in  affairs  and 
books,"  for  saying:  "and,  for  the  matter  of 
policy  and  government ;  that  learning  should 
rather  hurt  than  enable  thereunto  is  a  thing 
very  improbable;  "  and,  "It  cannot  but  be  a 
matter  of  doubtful  consequence  if  states  be 
managed  by  empiric  statesmen,  not  well  min- 
gled with  men  grounded  in  learning.  But, 
contrariwise,  it  is,  almost  without  instance 
contradictory,  that  ever  any  Government  was 
disastrous  that  was  in  the  hands  of  learned 
governors."     And   it  has  been   quite   common 


of  a  Revolution.  165 

of  late  years,  in  England  and  France,  particu- 
larly, to  see  eminence  in  literature  regarded  as 
recommendation  either  for  suffrages  of  the 
voters  or  for  appointment  to  office.  But  such 
popular  recognition  of  individual  accomplish- 
ments is  not  what  we  should  encourage  as 
good  example.  Our  idea  of  government  by 
literary  men  should  be  to  have  a  properly  edu- 
cated class  created,  properly  sifted  by  civil 
service  examinations — as  to  loyalty  especially 
— for  material  for  our  elections  or  appoint- 
ments. This  is  not  by  any  means  an  experi- 
ment. We  can  point  to  one  of  the  greatest, 
the  oldest,  the  most  stable  of  all  existing 
empires  for  an   illustration. 

There's  China — The  Chinese  Empire — you 
know.  Well :  there  they  have  had  dynasty 
after  dynasty — whatever  that  may  be  ;  the 
present  dynasty  is  number  twenty  and  a  good 
deal  more.  But,  practically,  they  have  for 
ages  been  governed  by  one  set  of  men — their 
literary  fellows.  With  them,  civil  service  ex- 
aminations are  as  old  and  older  than  the  Great 
Wall.  Examinations  that  last  for  weeks,  that 
are  no  joke.  The  young  fellows  have  to  study 
Confucius    artJ     Mencius ;     old    authors    who 


1 66  The  Centennial 

wrote  exclusively  about  virtue — public  and  pri- 
vate virtue — and  be  posted  on  the  piles  of 
commentators  on  these.  Well :  if  the  Chinese 
officials  are,  as  all  travellers  tell  us,  the  most 
venal,  unrighteous,  tyrannical  set  of  bureau- 
crats the  world  knows  of  ?  Well  : — why  even 
Bacon,  Lord  of  Verulam  and  Viscount  of  St. 
Albans,  had  his  snarling  detractors,  who  im- 
peached him,  as  chancellor-judge,  for  taking 
bribes.  And  they  mocked  at  his  learning  and 
called  him  names.  For,  as  he  said,  "  It  hath 
been  ordinary  with  politique  men  to  extenuate 
and  disable  learned  men  by  the  name  of 
pedants  " — doctrinaires,  Lowell  says,  is  the 
word  to-day.  Well,  but  the  educated  Chinese 
keep  on  having  the  offices  and  sustaining  their 
Central  Government  all  the  same.  If  educa- 
tion and  civil  service  examinations  will  do  that 
for  those  Chinese  fellows,  what  may  we  not 
expect  when  our  Professors  of  Political 
Science  run  the  machine  with  books  on  public 
virtue  all  beginning  with  the  Revolution  by 
adoption  !  If  the  Chinese  Mandarins  do  the 
way  they  do  do,  it  must  be  because  the  way 
they  do  is  to  do  the  way  their  ancestors  did. 
They  worship    the  graves   of  their  ancestors  : 


of  a  Revolution.  167 

annually  and  all  the  time.  So  that  the  practi- 
cal application  of  Confucius  on  virtue  is  set- 
tled by  what  has  always  been  the  application. 
We,  just  about  this  time,  are  venerating  the 
monuments  of  our  forefathers  of  a  hundred 
years  ago,  and  we  have  learned  something 
about  their  virtue  in  the  business  of  adoption. 
Their  example  binds  us  to  no  stand-still  pol- 
icy. And,  if  they  now  appear  not  to  have 
known  much  what  they  were  about,  why 
should  we  pretend  to  greater  foresight.  Rev- 
olution was  their  choice.  We  too  are  adopt- 
ers. Revolution  should  be  ours,  progressing 
on  high  moral  and  intellectual  ideas. 

In  the  mean  time  men  of  any  party,  or  of 
no  party,  may  in  a  certain  sense  sustain  the 
Central  Government :  in  their  obeying  the 
laws  and  constitution,  voting  for  good  persons 
for  Presidents  and  Congress,  or  in  seeking 
office  and  influence,  as  under  some  administra- 
tion, on  the  strength  of  their  personal  antece- 
dents. But  there  is  no  loyalty  in  all  this. 
Anybody  is  free  to  do  this  or  to  leave  it 
alone.  It  will  be  only  those  who  support  the 
Central  Government  on  the  Legitimist  basis 
and   as    claiming    sovereign    rights   for    "  the 


1 68  The  Centennial 

great  historical  party,"  who  will  be  truly  loyal 
as  men  are  loyal  to  monarchs  in  other  lands. 
As  private  subjects,  we  will  show  our  loyalty 
by  simply  voting  for  the  candidates  of  this 
party,  regardless  of  their  personal  valuation. 
To  use  the  expression  attributed  to  a  Massa- 
chusetts Senator  of  a  past  generation — "  a 
nomination,  eminently  unfit  to  be  made,  may 
be  eminently  fit  to  be  supported ;  "  and,  to 
borrow  the  unctuous  phrase  of  a  Massachu- 
setts Senator  of  to-day.  "A  man  cannot  serve 
God  and  Baal."  When  the  question  is  of  alle- 
giance, the  subject  who  proposes  to  be  Inde- 
pendent is  a  traitor.  Those  who,  while  pre- 
tending to  be  still  of  us,  refuse  this  test  of 
fidelity  are  apostates  as  well ;  far  more  guilty 
of  treason  than  those  who,  never  having  been 
shown  the  historic  truth  of  a  century-old  Rev- 
olution, may  be  seeking  to  find  their  sovereign 
elsewhere,  by  rummaging  among  the  records 
of  those  "  relics  of  usurpation,"  the  States  in 
union. 

In  this  way  it  will  be  that,  as  Garfield  truly 
said  when  in  Congress,  ideas  will  be  the  only 
sovereigns  ;  with  only  one  more  question  to 
answer  : — Whose  ideas  ? 


of  a  Revolution.  169 

It  must  be  an  issue  between  men  of  different 
ideas — not  better  distinguishable,  perhaps, 
than  as  "we  'uns  "  and  "you  'uns,"  according 
to  the  expressive  nemenclature  of  the  ruder 
Southrons  in  the  war.  John  Morley  remarks 
that  "  Rousseau's  whole  theory  tends  inevita- 
bly to  substitute  a  long  series  of  struggles 
after  phrases  and  shadows,  in  the  new  era,  for 
the  equally  futile  and  equally  bloody  wars  of 
dynastic  succession  which  have  been  the  great 
curse  of  the  old.  Men  die  for  a  phrase  as 
they  used  to  die  for  a  family." 

Issues  between  ideas — sovereign  ideas — 
could  be  decided  only  as  issues  between  sover- 
eign flesh  and  bone  are  decided, — by  "blood 
and  iron." 

We  who  in  our  contests  for  place  and  power 
every  day  proclaim  the  sovereignty  of  our 
ideas  as  proved  by  the  ordeal  of  battle,  will 
yet  long  display  from  our  platforms  and  our 
pulpits  the  garments  rolled  in  the  blood  of 
civil  war  :  imitating  from  a  distance  of  ages, 
the  chariot  of  the  crimson-robed  Imperator, 
followed  by  cringing  Senate  and  degenerated 
people,  exulting  in  the  spectacle  of  a  Roman 


170  The  Centennial 

Triumph    for  the  subjugator  of  a  despairing 
Republic. 

But  ideas  are  of  no  one  country.  As  sover- 
eign, their  sovereignty  is  cosmopolitan.  So 
we  are  more  than  a  mere  party  existing  in  or 
for  one  country  or  nation  only — we  who  sup- 
port the  sovereignty  of  our  own  ideas.  We 
say  with  Auguste  Comte,  in  concluding  his 
grand  work  on  Positive  Politics — 

"  In  the  name  of  the  Past  and  the  Future — 
the  servants  of  Humanity — both  its  philosoph- 
ical and  its  practical  servants — come  forward 
to  claim  as  their  due  the  general  direction  of 
this  world.  Their  object  is  to  constitute  at 
length,  a  real  Providence  in  all  departments, 
moral,  intellectual  and  physical,"  etc.,  etc. 

"  The  American  people  are  not  regardful 
simply  of  their  own  sovereignty.  They  have 
an  outlook  also  beyond  themselves  and  a  suc- 
cessful party  with  them,  while  national,  must 
be  international  as  well.  It  must  have  large 
human  interests.  *  *  *  Our  most  conspicuous 
national  trait  is  the  breadth  of  our  human 
sympathy.  We  recognize  our  relationship  to 
all  the  world  *  *  *  We  do  not  even  claim  our 
national  privileges  on  the  ground  of  our  na- 


of  a  Revolution.  171 

tional  peculiarities  *  *  *  We  claim  ours,  not 
for  the  reason  that  we  are  Americans,  but  that 
we  are  men.  *  *  *  This  fact  makes  another 
line  of  party  success  clear.  *  '::"  *  That  party 
with  us  is  likely  to  be  most  successful  in  which 
the  unerring  instinct  of  the  people  finds  the 
largest  sense  of  our  organic  unity  with  all 
mankind."  So  says  Julius  H.  Seelye,  Presi- 
dent of  another  college.'* 

By  rushing  onward  in  the  battle  of  ideas  we 
place  ourselves  in  solidarity  with  revolutionists 
everywhere :  with  those  who  in  Europe  call 
themselves  the  International — the  Party  of  the 
Revolution — Revolution  anywhere  and  every- 
where. We  are  of  them  :  they  are  of  us.  We 
are  all  "  men  without  a  country."  Let  them 
corne  along :  the  Communist,  the  Anarchist, 
the  Socialist,  or  whatever  else  !  We  are  all  in 
the  swim  !  Vogue  la  galere  !  Let  her  go,  Gal- 
lagher!     Vive  la  Commune!! 

*  Amherst,  Mass.,  Article,  "Our   Political   Prospects,"  in 
The  Forum,  March  1888,  p.  5. 


I 


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